After months of investor uncertainty and occasional hand-wringing, it has begun – the “tapering,” that is. This week, the Federal Reserve announced that it would scale back the growth in its agency MBS portfolio from $40 billion a month to $35 billion a month, starting in January. The central bank said it would continue to reinvest principal payments from its huge agency MBS portfolio, which was up to $1.483 trillion at the last official reading. With new production in the agency MBS market falling dramatically since April, the Fed’s target...
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Analysts forecast uncertainty for the agency MBS market going into 2014 as the policy landscape reshapes itself and investors cautiously adapt to the shape of things to come. Look for 2014 to be a “year of transition” amid a slowly rising range of U.S. Treasury yields, a slowly recovering economy, and a Federal Reserve that transitions away from quantitative easing toward forward guidance, according to RBS analysts. RBS noted...
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While the jumbo MBS market has all but ground to a halt in recent months, industry analysts expect that issuance will resume at some point early next year, but the 2014 forecast is dicey. Some $12.23 billion in jumbo MBS was issued through three quarters in 2013. The market hasn’t seen much activity in the final months of the year due to a lack of demand from investors and continued appetite from bank portfolios. A number of industry analysts expect...
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The supply of outstanding residential MBS grew by 0.3 percent during the third quarter, hitting $6.383 trillion, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis. The Federal Reserve gobbled up most of the increase. Ginnie Mae remained the fastest-growing MBS product. Its $1.377 trillion in outstanding single-family MBS was up 2.6 percent from the second quarter, and it expanded by 8.1 percent from September 30, 2012. Fannie Mae posted a more modest 0.8 percent increase in single-family MBS outstanding, while the Freddie Mac supply shrank slightly. The non-agency MBS market continued...[Includes two data charts]
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Non-agency MBS investors showed strong appetite for $5.1 billion in vintage securities that were auctioned last week as part of the Dutch government’s efforts to unwind a bailout of ING. Industry analysts said the successful sale shows that demand for high-yielding, low-priced bonds remains strong. The MBS sold by the Dutch State Treasury Agency were largely backed by option adjustable-rate mortgages, according to Interactive Data, a firm that tracks fixed-income products. ING and the DSTA didn’t provide pricing information on the sale. According to talk among traders before the auction, Interactive Data said...
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The Aug. 28, 2013, release of the re-proposed credit risk-retention rule by federal banking and housing regulators was eagerly awaited by investors and the mortgage industry. But it’s also raised some new questions for securitizers and investors, according to a new white paper from CoreLogic. The proposed rule sets out the risk-retention provisions for securitizers that underwrite ABS, but it also exempts from those provisions all securities issued by the housing agencies, which is to say, MBS generated by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae. “Given that exemption, what are the incentives for private securitization where there is capital relief in the alternative?” the white paper asked. CoreLogic notes...
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Unhappy with the fact that newly approved Ginnie Mae MBS issuers aren’t using the program very much, the agency plans to hire more account executives to work with mortgage firms and step up its outreach. “We’ve hired about five new account executives over the past six months,” Ginnie Mae president Ted Tozer told Inside MBS & ABS. “That gives us 12.” Tozer noted...
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