The Home Affordable Refinance Program was arguably one of the most successful initiatives aimed at delivering consumer relief in the wake of the housing meltdown. It’s proving hard to kill. The Federal Housing Finance Agency this week extended HARP for another year, until the end of 2018. It was slated to sunset at the end of this year. The program has been extended several times since it was authorized back in 2009. The extra year is...
Commercial banks and savings institutions continued to stockpile agency MBS during the second quarter of 2017 with a strong appetite for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pass-through securities. Total bank investment in residential MBS rose by $36.28 billion during the second quarter, lifting the industry’s aggregate portfolio to a record $1.799 trillion. Bank MBS holdings have risen steadily since the third quarter of 2014, growing by $264.07 billion over that period. In addition to those held-to-maturity and available-for-sale accounts, about a dozen banks held $16.34 billion of residential MBS in trading accounts. All of the growth has been...[Includes two data tables]
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are still titans in the residential MBS market when it comes to making new securities, but they have been forced to the sidelines as investors over nine years in conservatorship. The two government-sponsored enterprises held a combined $221.48 billion of residential MBS at the end of June. Firm numbers on the total volume of MBS outstanding at that point aren’t available yet, but it’s unlikely that Fannie and Freddie held more than 3.5 percent of the market. The two GSEs reduced...[Includes one data table]
The average daily trading volume in agency MBS fell to just $200.5 billion in July, the weakest reading of the year, according to the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association. Compared to the prior month, MBS trading fell by 4.5 percent. The strongest month of the year came in January at $229.8 billion. In general, a lower reading on average daily trading volume means...
Tricon American Homes is set to issue the first rated single-family rental securitization to include a voluntary property-substitution provision for the life of the transaction. The provision provides the issuer with flexibility to manage its overall portfolio, but rating services cautioned that the feature could have negative implications for investors. The planned Tricon American Homes 2017-SFR1 is collateralized by a $498.60 million fixed-rate loan secured by mortgages on 3,480 single-family rentals. The deal received preliminary AAA ratings from Kroll Bond Rating Agency, Moody’s Investors Service and Morningstar Credit Ratings. KBRA noted...
The proposed $4.3 billion merger of single-family rental operators Invitation Homes and Starwood Waypoint Homes will create a corporate landlord with 82,000 homes – and a behemoth of a potential client for Fannie Mae and possibly Freddie Mac. Earlier this year, Fannie agreed to provide Invitation Homes with $1 billion in financing. The deal broke new ground for the government-sponsored enterprise, but it also raised questions about whether a government-owned entity that received billions in taxpayer assistance should be lending money to a company (Invitation Homes) grubstaked by Wall Street. Since the Invitation-Fannie arrangement was unveiled, no other significant SFR financing vehicles involving a GSE has...
Attorneys for Fairholme Funds filed another motion this week requesting to view about 1,500 government documents in a lawsuit challenging the government’s net-worth sweep of profits at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And late last week, the government produced three more documents that were originally classified as “privileged.” In the new motion, the Fairholme attorneys asked the Federal Claims Court to use the “quick peek” procedure for more than 1,000 documents dating back to May 2012. These are among the many documents the plaintiffs say the government is still withholding under the deliberative process and bank examination privileges. It’s...
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