Agency MBS production cooled off significantly in July, as the end-of-quarter rush of new securitization tapered off, according to a new analysis and ranking by Inside MBS & ABS. A total of $166.09 billion of new agency MBS were issued during July, down 29 percent from June’s record monthly volume of $235.02 billion. Even with the decline, July was still the... [Includes one chart and one graph]
Read More
Renewed talk about radical restructuring of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac through a “good bank, bad bank” approach is raising concerns about investor confidence in the government-sponsored enterprises’ massive MBS programs as well as their future viability. Under the concept still being developed and debated within the Obama administration, the bad assets of the two GSEs would be...
Read More
Sen. Chris Dodd, D-CT, chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, this week laid out his views of what a credit rating reform bill should contain even as credit rating agencies urged caution in moving forward with legislation. In a Senate banking committee hearing this week, Dodd said bad methodology, weak regulatory oversight, conflicts of interest...
Read More
The government’s Home Price Decline Protection incentive is a positive move to address investors’ concerns about loan modifications amid falling home prices, but the paltry amount may not spur investors to be more aggressive on modifications, analysts say. A component of the Home Affordable Modification Program, the HPDP would pay investors between 1 percent and 3 percent of...
Read More
Some industry groups are clamoring for an “off-market” approach to help spur the housing market by having the federal government directly fund mortgages at a fixed, pre-set rate, effectively bypassing the secondary market. But this simple-sounding theory, born of the continued challenges being faced in the domestic real estate space, could have serious, wide-ranging and...
Read More
After a growth spurt in early 2009, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac saw their retained portfolios decline slightly during the second quarter of this year as aggressive MBS purchases by the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury have helped crimp their investment opportunities.The two government-sponsored enterprises had some $1.622 trillion of mortgage-related investments... [Includes one chart]
Read More
The Obama administration is facing an increased lobbying initiative from dozens of members of Congress and a number of industry groups to extend the lifespan of the Term Asset-Backed Securities Lending Facility, and to expand the kinds of collateral eligible for participation in the program to include residential MBS. Last week, a bipartisan group of 41 members of Congress wrote...
Read More