RMBS

Congressional demands for the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) to improve transparency, data accuracy, and legacy technology platforms have been backed by additional resources allocated to the effort.

Home values are falling in most major U.S. cities – except the nation's capital — and the average price in four of them are at their lowest level in 11 years, according to the newly released Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller home price index.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) held a press conference this morning ahead of its meeting to discuss the proposal on risk retention and the all important missing piece of the puzzle — Qualifying Residential Mortgages (QRM).

Hudson City Bancorp said Monday it has completed a "restructuring" of its balance sheet that reduced its high-cost borrowings and should allow for "increased future net interest income."

For the mortgage insurance industry the writing is on the wall: The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and its regulatory brethren will not recognize the value of mortgage insurance coverage in determining a QRM.

The Federal banking regulators started leaking their mortgage risk retention rules yesterday afternoon.

One of the most important pieces of the Dodd-Frank Act is set to start falling into place Tuesday as regulators offer a plan that would establish stringent underwriting standards for most mortgages, provide limited new rules for servicers, and detail how institutions must retain some risk of loans they intend to sell to the secondary market.

Walter Investment Management Corp. on Monday agreed to buy Green Tree Servicing, St. Paul — a specialty servicer — and its parent company in a deal valued at just over $1 billion.However, the buyer is putting up very little in the way of cash. To complete the purchase, Walter Investment will issue 1.8 million shares of common stock to the seller, assume $20 million of existing Green Tree debt, and issue $765 million of new debt.

The drive to reform the GSEs is raising two questions that could fundamentally reshape the way borrowers obtain mortgages: will a revamp effectively eliminate the 30-year fixed rate mortgage, and would that be a good thing?

The National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) last week indicated it would proceed with litigation against major Wall Street financial institutions unless some $50 billion in MBS are refunded.