Many people in the mortgage lending and securitization sectors thought the controversial eminent domain plan pushed by Mortgage Resolution Partners was graveyard dead after suffering a few high-profile defeats in various locales throughout the country. They were wrong. Now, a number of interested industry parties are back on the defensive, trying to convince city officials in Richmond, CA, to abandon a new advisory arrangement with MRP and to discourage local government representatives in North Las Vegas, NV, to not reach a similar agreement with the firm. In both instances, the plan being advanced by MRP would involve...

Securitization of income-property mortgages jumped 23.0 percent from already strong levels during the first three months of 2013, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS market analysis. A total of $47.61 billion of commercial MBS were issued during the first quarter, including a variety of non-agency deals as well as multifamily MBS issued by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae. That was the strongest level since structured finance markets tanked in 2008. The previous post-crash high was...[Includes one data chart]

The Vertical Capital Income Fund is a publicly traded mutual fund whose stated goal is to buy whole loans from banks and nonbanks, providing an attractive yield to its investors. But will it ever get around to securitizing its holdings? For now, the answer to that question appears to be no, but it’s something the fund is looking into. “Let’s put it this way; we’ve discussed the possibility,” said Richard Mason, vice president of secondary marketing for the company. Part of Vertical’s problem is...

The White House wants to change the HARP eligibility date, making more underwater borrowers eligible for the program, Inside Mortgage Finance has learned.

Despite little vocal, organized opposition, expected industry group support and bipartisan praise, industry observers on Capitol Hill say it is far from a given that the White House will follow through and nominate Moody’s Analytics’ Chief Economist Mark Zandi to a five-year term as the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The buzz has died down considerably since the White House leaked Zandi’s name early last week in the latest trial balloon of potential nominees to replace Edward DeMarco, who has led the FHFA in an acting capacity since September 2009. However, there’s a growing feeling of certainty within the industry that if President Obama does in fact follow through and sends a name to the Senate for confirmation, it would be Zandi.

Over the past year, Fannie Mae has sought to impose higher net worth requirements on seller/servicers but has been rebuffed – at least temporarily – by its regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, industry sources familiar with the matter told Inside The GSEs. These same sources argue that the FHFA is definitely open to the idea of hiking the current net worth minimum of $2.5 million, but it wants to make sure that any change applies equally to originators that sell to both Fannie and Freddie. “Right now this is a process,” cautioned one observer. “It’s not an event. There’s no timeframe on this yet.”

Fannie Mae is moving closer to hiring IBM as a technology vendor to handle certain data processing chores for the GSE, according to two former Fannie officials. However, as Inside The GSEs went to press, details about what exactly IBM might do for the secondary market giant was unclear.“It’s a huge contract, involving many employees and facilities,” said one source. “It’s broad-based.” But it’s also unclear whether the contract has anything to do with the single MBS platform, a project being overseen by Fannie’s regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

Fannie Mae’s plan to unload, potentially, billions of dollars of non-performing residential loans has been delayed and may be killed, according to industry officials who’ve been tracking the project. “It’s going nowhere, but it’s not like there’s a requirement for them to say so publicly,” said one advisor who is a vendor to Fannie. The GSE, to date, has declined to discuss the issue – along with its regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Fannie has been working on an NPL sale for close to a year, and even hired an investment banker, Milestone Advisors LLC, to guide it through the auction process. Initially, it had hoped to offer a package of $250 million of delinquent home mortgages for sale to the highest bidder.

Look for Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s regulator to press forward with its policy proposal to develop a set of aligned standards for force-placed insurance, the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency told lawmakers last week. Testifying before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, FHFA Acting Director Edward DeMarco said the agency plans to pursue a “broader approach” to force-placed insurance. “Our goal is to establish a set of standards that could be adopted by a broader set of mortgage market participants, similar to what was done with the Servicing Alignment Initiative,” said DeMarco. “This broadened approach will also enable greater regulatory coordination in an effort to consider the various issues associated with lender-placed insurance.”

The Federal Housing Finance Agency’s recent extension of the Home Affordable Refinance Program has “significantly lessened” the already slim prospects of any so-called HARP 3.0 legislation advancing through Congress, say analysts. The Responsible Homeowner Refinancing Act of 2013, by Sens. Robert Menendez, D-NJ, and Barbara Boxer, D-CA, had already been struggling to gain traction in Congress amid the steady volume of HARP refis in recent months and Republican resistance to expanding current HARP eligibility requirements. HARP had been scheduled to expire at the end of this year before the FHFA’s directive to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac earlier this month to extend the refi program through Dec. 31, 2015.