ABS

A new mortgage disclosure rule may initially do the opposite of what the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) intended.

Aided by one extra day in the holiday shopping season, retail spending between Nov. 1 and Dec. 24 rose an estimated 3.6% compared with a year earlier, according to the MasterCard Advisors SpendingPulse report.

To expedite sales of foreclosed properties, Fannie Mae said it will accept a buyer's purchase offer without notifying the servicer and before it determines whether the lender has to reimburse the secondary market agency for any losses.

GMAC is in line to get an additional $3.5 billion in assistance from the Treasury Department to cover mortgage losses from its troubled Residential Capital (ResCap) unit, according to published reports.

CapitalSource of Chevy Chase, Md., said Tuesday that it has raised $119 million by mortgaging some of the long-term-care properties it previously agreed to sell to Omega Healthcare Investors.

DoubleLine, the brainchild of former The TCW Group high-yield fixed-income CIO Jeffrey Gundlach, can now call itself a registered investment adviser after receiving approbation from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last week.

Standard & Poor’s has cut the ratings on 156 CLO tranches totaling $10.44 billion.

Part one of our examination of prospectuses for recent credit card securitizations focused on higher-end balance activity among the top issuers (see StructuredFinanceNews.com for article titled Dissecting Issuer Accounts posted Dec. 28). In this installment, it's lower-balance accounts' turn.

Now that it has emerged from bankruptcy, CIT Group has learned firsthand the same lesson other nonbank lenders have: the key to survival is to be more like a bank.

Fitch Ratings has downgraded 293 classes and affirmed 246 classes in 82 U.S. scratch and dent RMBS transactions.

The Government Employees' Retirement System (GERS) of the United States Virgin Islands filed a $1.2 billion suit against Morgan Stanley last week for allegedly pillowing CDO ratings and marketing investment products it expected to fail.

The Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index continued its upward climb in December but its Present Situation Index fell.

The serious delinquency rate of Fannie Mae's single-family loans nearly hit 5% at the end of October and its loan performance is deteriorating at a rate of 100 basis points per four-month period.

Home price declines throughout the summer months were softer versus earlier in the year because of record high affordability and the first-time homebuyers tax credit.

The Government Housing Bank (GH Bank) of Thailand this week signed a contract with the Secondary Mortgage Corp. (SMC) for the securitization of 50 billion baht ($1.4 billion) worth of loans within five years, according to market reports

At its mid-December meeting, the European Central Bank called for comments on banks' reporting of information about the securitized assets they then swap for ECB liquidity.

The credit binge has been over for years, but the real hangover starts in 2010 for banks holding a lot of commercial real estate loans.

The Treasury Department's pledge of unlimited support for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may foreshadow changes to the Obama administration's Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP).

December remittance reports, relfecting the November collection period, were released late yesterday.

Fitch Ratings has affirmed 41 and downgraded 171 classes within 20 Bayview Commercial Asset Trust small balance commercial ABS certificate transactions in the course of its ongoing reviews.