The pace of GSE reform has been too slow, said Mortgage Bankers Association President and CEO David Stevens, who’s calling for faster implementation of the Common Securitization Platform and Single-Security. He’s worried that if the CSP platform has not made enough progress, it could face changes in planning down the line. He said the real estate finance industry should continue to push for faster implementation to make sure that any advances made cannot be reversed. “Additionally, the platform should be open to non-agency mortgage-backed securities so that long-term efforts for both private capital and GSE reform can take advantage of the benefits of its efficiency, data and consistency” Stevens added, while speaking...

One of those high-ranking officials is Jim Parrott, former White House housing finance executive...

One of the government-sponsored enterprises appears likely to test a form of credit-risk transfer that mortgage bankers have been clamoring for: transactions that allow mortgage sellers to pay lower MBS guarantee fees on loans that have deeper mortgage insurance coverage than is required by the GSE charters. Robert Schaefer, vice president for credit enhancement strategy at Fannie Mae, said there is “a high probability that we will do an MI deal later this year that addresses the pain points” the GSE sees in the deeper MI concept. “We are talking...[Includes one data table]

Some potential investors in new non-agency MBS insist that a deal agent or transaction manager is necessary to revive the non-agency MBS market. Some issuers are willing to include a deal agent in their securities, though the exact functions and pricing issues still need to be worked out. “Many potential buyers of residential MBS have a strong desire for improved transaction governance mechanisms such as the use of independent deal agents,” Moody’s Investors Service said in a report published late last week. The rating service recently held a meeting with investors, issuers and others involved in the non-agency MBS market. Moody’s said...

Issuers of non-agency MBS willing to issue publicly-registered securities can look forward to thorough reviews by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Redwood Trust filed an updated shelf registration with the SEC this month and the SEC released some of the feedback that went into crafting the issuer’s new Form SF-3. Issuance of publicly-registered non-agency MBS has been minimal since the financial crisis, with issuers seeing pricing in the private 144A market as adequate. Public transactions are subject to more extensive disclosure standards than private deals. An initial letter from the SEC dated Oct. 29, 2014, noted...

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Open Market Trading Desk this week conducted the first of two small-value agency MBS sales operations, “for the purpose of testing operational readiness.” The second test is slated for June 1, 2016. The total current face value of sales across the two operations will be less than $150 million, according to the bank. The first transaction, which involved four Fannie Mae MBS currently valued at approximately $120 million, occurred in the middle of this week. The settlement date is June 13, 2016. Meanwhile, the June 1 operation will involve...

The share of new home mortgage originations packaged into MBS drifted slightly lower in the first quarter of 2016, a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis reveals. Some $255.7 billion of newly originated mortgages were pooled in MBS in the first three months of the year, representing a paltry 67.3 percent of the estimated $380 billion of first-lien originations in the primary market. For the purposes of calculating securitization rates, loans aged more than three months and modified loans are excluded from agency MBS issuance figures. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac securitized...[Includes one data table]

It was thought that with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau working on a new regulation to clarify key portions of the TRID integrated-disclosure rule and assignee liability that the scratch-and-dent market in TRID-defective loans would grind to a halt. But that’s not how it’s turned out. According to investors in “S&D” TRID mortgages and traders who play in the space, auctions of mortgages with errors (of all sorts) have continued...

Investors who are suing the government over the terms of the conservatorships of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac said the 53 documents recently made public solidify their claim that the government-sponsored enterprises had plenty of capital and a government bailout was unnecessary. The Treasury Department provided the documents to plaintiffs last week as part of a court case in Kentucky. “The newly de-designated documents also suggest...

A heated partisan debate broke out during a House subcommittee hearing late last week on whether multi-billion dollar settlements designed to resolve legacy MBS cases undermine Congress’ power to appropriate funds. Democrats and Republicans on the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations debated whether federal law allows banks to donate money to third-party charities to fulfill some of its settlement obligations. Ranking Minority member Al Green, D-TX, said...