The Department of Housing and Urban Development has used up the $25 billion of commitment authority allocated by Congress for the FHA multifamily and healthcare programs, though mortgage insurance applications will still be accepted through Sept. 30. Firm commitments issued as of Sept. 16 will be honored and loans may be endorsed and closed up until the cutoff date, HUD said in a letter this week to program partners. HUD will be unable to issue new commitments until an FY 2014 budget for the FHA multifamily and healthcare programs is approved. All transactions requesting commitment authority between ...

Residential mortgage REITs held $327 billion of single-family MBS at the end of the second quarter, according to a new market analysis by Inside MBS & ABS.

Rates for non-agency MBS and consumer ABS are expected to trend lower after the Federal Open Market Committee pulled a fast one on Wall Street this week by contradicting an expected “tapering” of its asset purchase program. Instead, the nation’s central bank announced it was continuing its ongoing purchases of $40 billion worth of agency MBS per month and $45 billion in longer-term Treasury securities. Prior to the FOMC’s meeting this week, the consensus view was that the Federal Reserve would pare monthly purchases of Treasury bonds by $10 billion and agency MBS by $5 billion beginning in October, according to analyst Isaac Boltansky at Compass Point Research & Trading LLC. “The housing sector has been...

The shift from distressed property sales to non-distressed creates opportunities for mortgage bankers because distressed properties are often purchased by investors with cash.

Fannie Mae this week hired James Kittridge, a former executive from Barclays Capital, to manage its participation in the fledgling common securitization platform project with Freddie Mac. However, both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – and their regulator – continue to provide little in the way of public information on how the CSP project is progressing. The Federal Housing Finance Agency will not even confirm that it recently hired the search firm of Spencer Stuart to help find an executive to oversee work being performed by the government-sponsored enterprises and a core group of staffers at the regulator. The starting salary for the FHFA CSP post is...

Lenders and issuers already comply with most of the requirements in the recently re-proposed rule on risk retention as well as the disclosure standards under the proposed revision to Regulation AB, according to a former Treasury Department official. Darius Kingsley, currently a managing director and co-general counsel at JPMorgan Chase and former chief of Treasury’s homeownership preservation office, said the risk-retention rule will likely prompt increased issuance of non-agency MBS. “I think it’s...

Commercial banks and savings institutions held $165.8 billion of non-mortgage ABS in their portfolios as of the end of June, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis of call report data. Second-quarter ABS holdings were up just 1.3 percent from the end of March, but it was enough of a gain to establish a new record for the industry. Compared to a year ago, bank and thrift ABS holdings were up 4.6 percent. The aggregate portfolio was...[Includes one data chart]

It’s not a surprise that FHFA has been quiet about its not-overly popular state-level g-fee proposal, according to Robert Bostrom, a shareholder at the law firm of Greenberg Traurig and a former general counsel at Freddie Mac.

Real estate investment trusts that focus on investing in residential MBS continued to see declines in their portfolios during the second quarter, but their earnings outlook may have improved somewhat this week, analysts say. Residential mortgage REITs held a combined $327.3 billion of single-family MBS as of the end of the second quarter, according to a new market analysis by Inside MBS & ABS. That was down 5.4 percent from the previous quarter, and it was the third straight quarterly decline since REIT MBS holdings reached a high of $374.2 billion in September 2012. REIT MBS holdings are...[Includes one data chart]

A federal district court judge in California this week dismissed without prejudice an action brought by securitization trustees to stop the City of Richmond, CA, and its partners from implementing an eminent domain strategy to seize and refinance underwater mortgages. Judge Charles Breyer of the U.S. District for Northern California said he decided to dismiss the case rather than hold it in abeyance because “the plaintiffs’ claims are not yet ripe for adjudication.” In other words, one can’t sue over something that has not happened or is not bound to happen. In fact, certain developments, such as the finalization of an agency rule or the resolution of pending suits in other jurisdictions, may leave...