Shopping for credit ratings is alive and well despite the laws and regulations that have been put in place to curb the practice, but so far credit rating agencies have not lowered their standards, according to Morningstar Credit Ratings. “Arrangers and issuers of structured debt continue to tightly control the selection of credit rating agencies,” Morningstar said in a recent analysis. But information quality and transparency fall short of investor expectations, and the general interests of the key stakeholders remain somewhat misaligned, the rating service said. Arrangers and issuers of residential MBS, non-mortgage ABS and commercial MBS continue...

We should point out that even though LoanDepot is doing the buying, the Mortgage Master brand name will survive. LD did the same thing when it combined forces with imortgage last year…

Professional money managers see the U.S. economy on a sounder footing over the next 12 months, with expectations of little or no gain among mortgage-related assets over the next year, according to a new Fitch Ratings survey of fixed-income investors. Opinions about the credit conditions of mortgage investment vehicles in the near term mostly focused on modest, rather than severe, deterioration. In this segment, investors were mostly optimistic about prime mortgage-backed bonds. Overall, the survey found...

Non-agency issuers produced $32.16 billion of new commercial MBS, a 40 percent increase from the second quarter.

A total of $51.18 billion of commercial mortgages were securitized during the third quarter of 2014 as the sector reached a new post-crisis high in new issuance, according to a new market analysis by Inside MBS & ABS. Commercial mortgage securitization rose 38.4 percent from the second quarter and represented the biggest three-month period in new issuance since the third quarter of 2007. For the first nine months of 2014, commercial mortgage securitization totaled $119.76 billion, down 24.4 percent from the same period last year. New issuance was off on a year-to-date basis because of the slump in production during the first half of 2014. Both sides of the market posted...[Includes one data chart]

Participants in the residential mortgage market were largely pleased with the risk-retention requirements finalized last week for certain non-agency MBS. However, the requirements, which also cover commercial MBS and other ABS, drew a wide range of criticism from others. “The short version is that the rule doesn’t require meaningful credit risk retention where it counts, and imposes significant market-shaping safe-harbor requirements where skin in the game isn’t so important,” said Adam Levitin, a professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center. He noted...

Former FHFA Acting Director Edward DeMarco wanted to shrink the multifamily programs of Fannie and Freddie, but that initiative has been placed on the back burner.

Issuers of securities backed by assets other than residential mortgages were able to win some concessions from federal regulators in the final risk-retention rule that was approved this week. However, the standards for “qualified” loans that are exempt from risk-retention requirements are much more stringent than those for qualified-residential mortgages, even including downpayment requirements in some instances. The risk-retention requirements for non-mortgage ABS and commercial MBS take effect two years after the final rule is published in the Federal Register. Securities that include loans that don’t qualify for exemptions will be required to have risk-retention of at least 5.0 percent, though there are instances when the required retention can be lower. The final standards qualifying commercial loans, commercial real-estate loans and auto loans were...

After all, didn’t America suffer a housing “depression” because credit was too loose? Some GOP conservatives in Congress live by the edict: those who can own; those who can’t rent…

Bill Dallas, who runs Skyline Lending, told us he believes the “new” non-agency movement is beginning right now. “Today, we‘re doing 90 percent agency,” he said. “In 2017 the ratio will be 60 percent agency.”