Securitization

The Mortgage Bankers Association's (MBA) weekly mortgage applications survey for the week ending Dec. 17 showed that the market composite index dropped 18.6% on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier.

Mortgage bankers originated $26.4 billion of Federal Housing Administration (FHA)-backed loans in November, an 8.2% jump from the prior month, but delinquencies jumped as well.

Sales of existing single-family homes jumped 6.7% in November after falling 2% in October, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR).

Resource America's subsidiary Resource Europe Management sold the management contract of Resource Europe CLO I B.V., a €300 million ($392.74 million) CLO. The sale was made to an affiliate of Intermediate Capital Group (ICG).

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo filed a lawsuit against Ernst & Young (E&Y) charging the accounting firm with helping Lehman Brothers Holdings engage in accounting fraud, masking the true state of its balance sheet.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bought nearly 400,000 refinanced loans in the third quarter, an 82% spike from the second quarter, according to data released Tuesday by their regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA).

The government's Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) finally gained momentum in November with servicers completing 30,000 permanent loan restructurings, a 15% rise from October.

If the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) has its way, federal regulators would not wait for Congress to create national servicing standards, but instead write such rules as part of risk retention guidelines set to be released soon.

Moody's Investors Service today took actions on 35 transactions of payments owed to the issuers pursuant to the Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) between the domestic tobacco manufacturers and the 46 states and certain territories party thereto.

With Toronto-Dominion Bank's $6.3 billion agreement to buy Chrysler Financial from the private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, the Toronto banking giant is betting that demand for auto loans will pick up as the economy rebounds.

Perella Weinberg Partners named six new partners. The partners have all been promoted to partner from managing director and are based in New York and London.

Wells Fargo & Co. on Monday agreed to modify more than $2 billion of risky payment option ARMs from two lenders that the mega bank bought during the last years of the decade: World Savings of Oakland, and Wachovia Corp. of Charlotte.

In recent months, servicing failures have led to executive mea culpas, Washington drubbings and a 50-state investigation of the country's biggest banks. As unpleasant as all of those things were, they have only dented large servicers' profitability.

Turkey’s Garanti Bank has closed a club deal backed by diversified payment rights (DPRs) to the tune of €250 million, according to a source close to the transaction. The paper is rated ‘A-’ by Fitch Ratings, the first time the agency has assessed DPR bonds from Garanti. In general, Moody’s Investors Service and Standard & Poor’s were far more active on the Turkish DPR front during the issuance boom of a few years ago, due to the fact that deals were overwhelmingly wrapped by monoline insurers.

Don't assume that Bank of America Corp. has blinked.

Prepayment speeds on all Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac MBS rose 6% and 8%, respectively, during November, but likely will slow soon in the months ahead, according to a new market report from Annaly Capital Management, New York.

Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard filed a lawsuit against Bank of America Corp. Friday, claiming the country's largest mortgage servicer's handling of loan modifications constitutes consumer fraud.

The Senate passed a bill directing the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to conduct a comprehensive study of the National Credit Union Administration's (NCUA) handling of the corporate credit union meltdown.

Marathon Asset Management recently closed a new commercial real estate property in a $27.5 million senior mortgage secured by a retail center in East Brunswick, NJ.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch is looking to build on AEGON USA Realty Advisors commercial real estate lending expertise to source new lending opportunities for its securitization program.