A start-up is working to allow retirees and other individual investors to buy into non-qualified mortgages, a market that so far has been dominated by hedge funds and other large institutional investors, along with occasional inclusion in non-agency mortgage-backed securities. Brad Walker, CEO of Income&, said the new platform offers an alternative to traditional fixed-income investments. He said Income& is trying to create a higher-yielding, lower-risk fixed-income instrument ...

The Structured Finance Industry Group published the fourth edition of its “RMBS 3.0 Green Papers” this week. The trade group said it will release a fifth edition of the Green Papers in the coming weeks. The latest papers address various issues in the non-agency mortgage-backed security market, including representations and warranties, the concept of a deal agent and data disclosure. Moody’s Investors Service this month withdrew its assessment of ... [Includes two briefs]

Credit Suisse issued two more series of notes this week on its mortgage-lending warehouse securitization offering, according to Moody’s Investors Service. The $1.20 billion in total new issuance from the Wall Street firm followed two notes it issued in August totaling $800 million. As with the August issuance, the new Mortgage Repurchase Agreement Financing Trust, Series 2016-3 and Series 2016-4, received A2 ratings from Moody’s. All of the deals were underwritten by Credit Suisse and HSBC Securities. The transactions are backed...

Ginnie Mae’s decision to change the pooling requirements for streamline refinance loans should boost investor confidence and slow new production of GNMA IIs, Deutsche Bank analysts said. The change could be seen as mildly more restrictive than current pooling standards, particularly having more impact on VA loans, which unlike FHA, have no seasoning requirement to qualify for streamline refinancing, said Jeana Curro, bank research analyst. Under new guidance issued last month, in order to be pooled into standard Ginnie I or Ginnie II multi-issuer pools, streamline refi loans must show...

Goldman Sachs has agreed to pay an undisclosed settlement amount to ACA Financial Guaranty Corp. to resolve allegations of fraud related to insurance on a collateralized debt obligation backed by subprime mortgages. Details of the Abacus CDO settlement were not disclosed, although ACA initially sought $120 million in damages. First filed in 2011, ACA’s lawsuit accused Goldman Sachs and hedge fund Paulson & Co. of fraudulently persuading it to guarantee payments on the CDO prior to the financial crisis. ACA alleged...

The Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee appears to be repeating last year’s story line of promising multiple increases in interest rates at the start of the year, only to delay and delay until the final month, when it finally raised rates a bare minimum of 25 basis points. This month, the Fed passed on another opportunity to raise rates and suggested to many in the market that it finally will ratchet the federal funds target rate up a notch at its final meeting of the year in mid-December. The FOMC said the labor market has continued to strengthen and economic activity has picked up from the modest pace seen in the first half of this year. “Although the unemployment rate is little changed in recent months, job gains have been solid,” the committee said. Meanwhile, household spending has risen...

Investors said that market is in the “sweet spot” when it comes to mortgage credit, while speaking at a symposium in Washington sponsored by the Urban Institute and CoreLogic this week. John Vibert, managing director and co-head of structured products for Prudential, said his company is much more interested in financing nonperforming loans than in owning such assets. “We think...

Allegations in an impending government MBS fraud case against Moody’s Corp. will likely mirror allegations of fraud and misrepresentation in a 2013 civil suit against Standard & Poor’s, according to industry observers. Moody’s disclosed the expected case in a recent filing of third-quarter earnings results with the Securities and Exchange Commission. According to the credit rating agency, lawsuits are likely pending from both the Department of Justice and state attorneys general over ratings of MBS in the years leading up to the financial crisis. In a letter dated Sept. 29, 2016, the DOJ informed...

Single-family rental securitization is increasing as spreads have recovered after sell-offs seen earlier this year, according to analysts. While issuance volume will likely be down this year compared with recent years, various factors point to relatively strong issuance of SFR securities going forward. Through September, $2.70 billion in SFR securities had been issued in 2016, according to commercial MBS data tracked by Inside MBS & ABS. That compares to $7.17 billion for all of last year. While issuance has lagged this year, Ying Shen, a research analyst at Deutsche Bank Securities, said...

Ginnie Mae has announced a policy change to ease investor concern over recent streamlined refinancing trends involving a small number of mortgage loans in Ginnie pools. The policy change addresses the issue of premature streamline refinancing of certain loans in Ginnie Mae I single-issuer pools that threatens to deflate investors’ expectation of a full 100-percent return on their MBS investments. “Investor participation … depends...