Securitization

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.

While default and deferral rates for U.S. bank trust preferred security CDOs remain flat, the sector saw a first last month when a tender offer was accepted in connection with a CDO, according to Fitch Ratings.

Pending home sales climbed 2.1% to a reading of 90.8 in February, according to a report released Monday by the National Association of Realtors (NAR).

Four states are considering legislation that would prohibit or restrict appraisers from using distressed sales, such as those of foreclosed properties, as comparable sales when assessing the value of a home.

K&L Gates hired Howard Goldwasser and Xavier Ruiz for its New York office as partners in the finance and corporate practices, respectively.

KGS-Alpha Capital Markets hired Mark Noble as head of structured corporate and agency debt and Jim Tymeck as the new head of the finance desk.

Clayton Holdings formed an independent financial analysis and consulting group and hired a team of structured finance professionals based in New York City to run the practice.

The American Securitization Forum (ASF) opened a Washington, D.C. office in an effort to further its advocacy efforts on behalf of the securitization markets.

Loss severities rose across the board for all the indices in the lastest ABX Remittance reports, according to a report from Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Not only are state attorneys general pushing the nation's megabanks to sign a servicing settlement tied to faulty foreclosure practices, but they want these institutions to sign a regulatory consent order, holding their boards' responsible for correcting deficiencies.

Fitch Ratings has placed 41 tranches of Portuguese structured finance transactions on Rating Watch Negative (RWN) following the lowering of Portugal's long-term foreign and local currency issuer default ratings to 'A-' from 'A+' on March 24.

This week’s U.S. Treasury announcement that it will be selling up to $10 billion per month of its $140 billion MBS portfolio came as a surprise to most MBS market players.

Business development companies, closed-end funds that invest in the debt and equity of private companies, took their lumps during the credit crisis, but they are suddenly hot commodities.

Mortgage bankers likely won't see any official proposals to revamp servicing compensation until late summer, Ginnie Mae president Ted Tozer said Friday morning.

Redwood Trust's recent RMBS deal has been lauded by Fitch Ratings as implementing several important structural features that further reduced credit risk exposure for its senior bond investors. These are an improvement over 2005-2007 vintage prime deals.

In October 2008, 11 state attorneys general settled a lawsuit with Bank of America Corp. that was supposed to provide relief for up to 400,000 homeowners.

Freddie Mac purchased $38.9 billion of home mortgages from its seller/servicers in February, a slight gain from January, according to figures released Friday morning.

Although bankers are likely to have significant concerns about the risk retention proposal due next week, they appear to have won at least one victory already: a choice over how to structure risk that must be retained.

With principal reduction modifications a key component of the preliminary term sheet that was recently released by the State Attorneys General, there has been more attention placed on the success of these loan modification programs and their accompanying moral hazard issues, analysts said.