Freddie Mac’s multifamily K-Deals are “a model for the future of mortgage securitization,” according to David Brickman, a senior vice president overseeing multifamily activities at the government-sponsored enterprise. However, the risk-sharing deals face regulatory hurdles and differ in a number of ways from practices in the residential mortgage securitization market. While Brickman pushed K-Deals as a model, it wasn’t the design used in the Structured Agency Credit Risk risk-sharing transaction Freddie issued in July. K-Deals include subordinate bonds that are not guaranteed by the GSE, while the STACR transaction was unsecured corporate debt based on a reference pool of mortgages with Freddie taking a small first-loss position followed by two non-guaranteed tranches. When Freddie issued the STACR transaction, the GSE stressed...

Home Loan Servicing Solutions is preparing to issue a $350 million servicer advance receivable ABS, according to a presale report issued late last week by Standard & Poor’s. With the deal, $5.3 billion in mortgage servicer advance ABS will have been issued this year, according to the rating service. S&P has been the dominant rating agency in servicer advance ABS. Erkan Erturk, senior director of global structured finance research at the rating service, said issuance of servicer advance ABS is on track to reach the $7.0 billion in issuance S&P predicted at the beginning of the year. HLSS Servicer Advance Receivables Trust Series 2013-T6 received...

Lew Ranieri's company, Shellpoint, is coming to market with its second jumbo MBS deal of the year.

As leaders of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee double down on their efforts to craft a bipartisan mortgage finance reform bill, experts told lawmakers during a hearing this week that any reform effort must preserve the “smooth functioning” of the to-be-announced market. Given that it is reliant on MBS guaranteed by the government, the TBA market is “extremely sensitive” to any changes to the role that the government will have in the future housing finance system, according to Richard Johns, executive director of the Structured Finance Industry Group. “SFIG believes...

Banks, investors and their allies opposed to the City of Richmond, CA, using eminent domain to seize underwater mortgages, refinance and repackage them for sale to other investors were scheduled to have their first hearing in court at week’s end. Current investors, through trustees Wells Fargo and Deutsche Bank AG, have sued in U.S. District Court to block the plan. Parties in Wells Fargo Bank, National Association, as Trustee, et al., plaintiffs, vs. City of Richmond, California, a municipality; and Mortgage Resolution Partners LLC, defendants, Case No. CV-13-3663-CRB, were to appear Sept. 12 and Sept. 13, before Judge Charles Breyer of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco. The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce jointly submitted...

The Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago will issue Ginnie Mae MBS backed by mortgages originated by member financial institutions, the two entities announced jointly this week. The new conduit product, called the MPF Government MBS, is an offshoot of the Chicago FHLBank’s Mortgage Partnership Finance program. The new product is intended to provide smaller mortgage lenders that lack direct access to the secondary mortgage market another option for their customers. Lenders will be...

Wall Street believes that housing/GSE reform legislation should provide for the creation of a single agency MBS.

There are signs that residential lenders are willing to accept slightly more credit risk, said one mortgage vendor.

Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and Flagstar are all working on large servicing deals, but as sellers. Meanwhile, HUD is worried about lower GSE loan limits.

After a long period of inertia, Senate leadership from both sides of the aisle have seized the initiative in the effort to reform mortgage finance with the first of a series of hearings this week aimed at crafting a comprehensive, bipartisan bill by year’s end. Meanwhile, a largely partisan House Republican bill that would seal the fate of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has been shut out of the floor vote schedule this fall amid significant opposition from industry trade groups.Last month, at the direction of Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee Chairman Tim Johnson, D-SD, and Ranking Member Mike Crapo, R-ID, senior staffers met with various industry “stakeholders” to get field reform input in advance of the hearings.