Members of the Treasury Markets Practice Group are supportive of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s recent proposal to establish margin requirements for transactions in the “to be announced” market, seeing them as compatible with what the TMPG itself is trying to accomplish with the same products. According to the minutes of a recent meeting, TMPG members noted that FINRA’s proposed rule amendments would be binding across FINRA’s membership, which would further the objectives of the TMPG’s agency MBS margining recommendation and encourage wider adoption of margining practices over time. “While recognizing that the TMPG’s margining best practices go...

Favorable shifts in macroeconomic conditions have contributed to a rise in single-family rentals and an increase in the investment in these properties by institutional buyers, prompting Moody’s Investors Service to release its criteria for rating the emerging single-family rental securitization market. The criteria come four months after Moody’s rated Invitation Homes 2013-SFR. The rating agency awarded $278.7 million in triple-A ratings for the largest tranche of the deal. “A slowly improving economy will boost...

Private-equity firms such as Orange Capital and EJF Capital have been gobbling up shares in PHH Corp. the past year, believing the stock is undervalued. Among other things, “smart money” investors have noticed that the liquidation value of its mortgage servicing rights almost equals the entire company’s market capitalization rate. But that doesn’t mean PHH Corp. will be successful in its attempt to unlock shareholder value by selling off parts of the company, including its mortgage banking franchise and automobile fleet business. “The only thing that’s certain about PHH is that it’s trading below book value,” said one mortgage executive who has conducted business with the firm. Late this week, PHH common was selling...

Although investors and participants initially showed a great deal of interest in the fledgling market for bonds backed by single-family rental properties, rating agencies are starting to take a closer look at the business and don’t like everything they see. “Rising U.S. home prices have pushed down rental yields in many single-family rental markets, a trend that will likely discourage some institutional investors from buying distressed properties and converting them into rental units,” according to a recent report from Moody’s Investor Service. The rating agency adds...

Officials at Redwood Trust, the leader in issuance of jumbo mortgage-backed securities since 2010, suggested this week that issuance of jumbo MBS from the firm this year likely won't hit the level seen in 2013. "Our preferred distribution for jumbo loans is securitization since we can retain attractive investments for our portfolio," Brett Nicholas, Redwood's president, said this week on a call with investors. "Today, however, whole-loan sales offer better execution." He said...

The wait for new disclosure requirements for non-agency mortgage-backed securities was extended this week as the Securities and Exchange Commission re-opened the comment period for the so-called Reg. AB2. The requirements for disclosures on new non-agency MBS and other asset-backed securities were first proposed in 2010. The SEC was set to approve a final Reg. AB2 rule earlier this month but is now reconsidering due to privacy issues. The delay comes as ...

With the Federal Reserve acquiring a significant portion of new agency MBS issuance, the aggregate MBS holdings of banks and thrifts continued to decline in late 2013, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside MBS & ABS. Commercial banks and savings institutions held a total of $1.507 trillion of residential MBS in portfolio as of the end of last year, newly-released call-report data reveal. That was down 0.4 percent from the end of the third quarter and marked the industry’s fifth consecutive quarterly decline. Bank and thrift MBS holdings fell...[Includes two data charts]

Researchers at the Federal Reserve determined that, contrary to “the prevailing view in economics literature,” quantitative easing initiatives by the Fed over the past few years had an impact on the pricing and yields for agency MBS. In a new study, Fed analysts Diana Hancock and Wayne Passmore found that the central bank’s purchases of Treasury securities and agency MBS since 2008 lowered MBS yields and mortgage interest rates by more than what would have been suggested by changes in market expectations alone. Hancock and Passmore said...

Mortgage-industry veteran John Robbins has launched a new mortgage cooperative that plans to bundle mortgages for sale into the secondary market and eventually form a conduit through which it hopes to securitize non-QM loans. “We’re going after best execution,” Robbins told Inside MBS & ABS. Of course, the venture – aptly titled The Mortgage Collaborative – is...

In what’s claimed to be the third-largest settlement of a class-action suit by investors in non-agency MBS, Royal Bank of Scotland agreed to pay $275 million in cash. Investors led by the New Jersey Carpenters Vacation Fund claimed that RBS did not disclose that loans included in Harborview MBS that it sold failed to meet the deals’ underwriting guidelines. The settlement is awaiting approval by U.S. District Judge Harold Baer in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Separately, the remains of Lehman Brothers settled...