The Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee this week concluded its 53rd consecutive meeting without raising interest rates, issuing a statement that provided no hint whatsoever that such an increase would occur this year, notwithstanding previous commentary and the wishes of many on Wall Street. “To support continued progress toward maximum employment and price stability, the committee today reaffirmed its view that the current 0 to 0.25 percent target range for the federal funds rate remains appropriate,” said the Fed in its now-boilerplate language. In determining how long to maintain this target range, the FOMC said...

DBRS published proposed criteria this week to rate ABS backed by proceeds from Property Assessed Clean Energy programs. While the Federal Housing Finance Agency continues to place PACE-related prohibitions on mortgages delivered to the government-sponsored enterprises, the rating agency suggested that PACE programs are designed with a number of protections. Comments on the proposed criteria from DBRS are due Sept. 8. The firm would join Kroll Bond Rating Agency in offering ratings on PACE securitizations. KBRA has rated four PACE deals, the first of which was issued in March 2014 and all of which have received AA ratings. The PACE deals rated by KBRA were related...

The Securities and Exchange Commission recently loosened risk-retention requirements somewhat for collateralized loan obligations, giving in to requests from industry participants. Risk-retention requirements for non-residential securitized products, including CLOs, take effect Dec, 24, 2016. Federal regulators issued a final rule for risk-retention requirements in October 2014 and CLO industry participants have been working since then to try and get regulators to address issues created by the final rule. In mid-July, Crescent Capital Group wrote...

Effective immediately, any Ginnie Mae issuer that wants to bring servicing in-house from a subservicer must get the agency’s prior written approval...

Bank of America, ranked third, continued to unload servicing and pared its holdings by 8.9 percent during the second quarter.

Over the past few months, several high level executives have left Nationstar Mortgage.

The average loan balance in the package is $214,935.

But Garrett also noted: “Congress should kill the CFPB, or at least de-fang it, but until it does, total compliance is necessary.” That’s more like it…

One consultant said many lenders are now reviewing their MSAs and may follow the lead of Prospect.

There are plenty of mortgage servicers that are building their portfolios in a market that is merely treading water, but many of the biggest players in the business continued to ease back from the business during the second quarter of 2015. As a group, the top five servicers still accounted for an impressive 40.1 percent of the mortgage servicing market, but their combined portfolio – $3.943 trillion at the end of June – shrank by 3.3 percent during the second quarter. In March, the top five accounted for 41.4 percent of the market, and at the midway point in 2014 they held a combined 44.1 percent share. Four of the top five contracted...[Includes two data tables]