The securitization market requires less of a heavy handed approach from government and a softer touch in order to restore investor confidence and lure private capital back into the market, industry executives told senators on Capitol Hill this week. Witnesses testifying before the Senate Banking Subcommittee on Securities, Insurance and Investment said the state of the securitization market is uncertain, due to government subsidies crowding out budding private sector resurgence, as well as an overly broad, but ambiguous, interpretation of the Dodd-Frank Act by regulators. "The consequences of failing to attract sufficient private-sector capital to...

Republican members of the House Financial Services Committee are warming up another set of bills designed to "tie the hands" of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Unveiled last week, the seven bills affecting the operations of the government-sponsored enterprises while they remain in conservatorship will be discussed during a hearing next week in the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets and GSEs. "These seven bills were carefully designed to tie the hands of Fannie and Freddie so that they are no longer a drag on American taxpayers, a threat to our economic security and an impediment to private market growth and...

Narrowly defined "qualified residential mortgages" under risk-retention rules and anything less than an absolute "qualified mortgage" safe harbor can severely limit credit availability and ultimately hamper the return of non-agency securitization, warned Amherst Securities Group in a new report. Arguing that risk retention may not produce any net benefit, the Amherst report said that the proposed definition of a qualified residential mortgage is too restrictive and that it may result in less mortgage credit being available. The effect would be more detrimental if Congress decides to further limit the reach of both...

The Securities and Exchange Commission this week unanimously approved a proposed rule intended to strengthen and improve the transparency of credit ratings via new requirements for the rating agencies themselves, as well as third-party due diligence providers, underwriters and issuers. The new proposed rule would implement provisions in the Dodd-Frank Act, in which Congress noted the importance of credit ratings, said SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro. "It also noted that ratings that were applied to structured financial products proved inaccurate – and contributed significantly to the mismanagement of risks by...

The federal government's gradual pullback as an investor in the MBS market is beginning to open more space for commercial banks and other private investors. Commercial banks increased their investment in residential MBS by a solid 6.5 percent during the first quarter, pushing their combined holdings to a record $1.311 trillion. That represented about 20.0 percent of an overall MBS market that has been shrinking since the third quarter of 2009. Bank holdings of residential MBS were up 14.2 percent from the first quarter of last year. Through the U.S. Treasury, the Federal Reserve and the retained holdings of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the federal government held... [Includes two data charts]

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has sued two appraisal service providers for allegedly flawed appraisals on some 414 mortgage loans that caused millions of dollars in losses to the now-defunct Washington Mutual Bank. Separate complaints were filed May 9 in the U.S. District Court of Central California against CoreLogic, Inc. and LSI Appraisal, their parent companies and various affiliates for alleged gross negligence and multiple contract violations in connection with improper appraisals delivered to WaMu in 2006 through 2008. Out of the thousands of appraisals provided by the two companies to WaMu during the period, the FDIC claimed...

Can I afford this mortgage, and can I get a better deal somewhere else? Those are the two questions the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau wants borrowers to be able to answer when it is finished producing a new mortgage disclosure form that combines and would ultimately replace those required under the Truth in Lending Act and the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act. This week, the CFPB released two alternate prototypes for industry and public review and comment, part of its Know Before You Owe project. The goal is to create a single, simpler form that makes the costs and risks of the loan clear and allows consumers to...

The mortgage broker industry saw a huge decline in new origination volume during the first quarter of 2011 as lenders appeared to focus on shoring up their retail channels in the face of a major slowdown in new lending volume. A new ranking and analysis by Inside Mortgage Finance reveals that the mortgage broker share of the market fell to a record low 7.1 percent during the first three months of 2011. Broker originations plummeted 59.6 percent from the fourth quarter to a record low of just $23 billion. In fact, the top three lenders in the market each generated more retail production than the entire broker channel did during... [Includes four data charts]

A proposed bipartisan bill that would dissolve Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac but retain an explicit government guarantee for certain mortgage-backed securities is either dangerously unfeasible or it's a measured way to preserve the government's role in housing finance, along with the 30-year mortgage, according to industry observers. Filed last late week, H.R. 1859, the Housing Finance Reform Act of 2011, would phase out the government-sponsored enterprises within five years and replace them with privately capitalized entities authorized to issue MBS that carry a government guarantee. The bill would empower the Federal Housing Finance Agency to issue...