Cowen notes: “…this latest flare up reinforces our view that Treasury is unlikely in 2017 to unilaterally change the profit sweep at Fannie and Freddie…”
The SFIG Vegas conference this week set another attendance record for the annual event, demonstrating strong interest in the structured finance market. While investors are comfortable with most asset classes of MBS and ABS, significant concerns remain about non-agency MBS. More than 6,700 people registered for the conference, according to Jade Friedensohn, director of programming at Information Management Network, which produced the conference along with the Structured Finance Industry Group. Potential investors in non-agency MBS continued...
Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae produced a combined $96.70 billion of new single-family MBS during February, a sharp 27.9 percent decline from the previous month, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside MBS & ABS. February’s issuance was the lowest monthly volume since March of last year. All three agencies saw substantial declines in gross MBS issuance, led by Fannie’s 31.9 percent drop. Still, agency MBS production in the first two months of 2017 was...[Includes two data tables]
Late last month, Fairholme Capital chief Bruce Berkowitz sent out a press release reassuring his shareholders that the hedge fund’s bet on owning the junior preferred stock of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will prevail, eventually. Among other things, the veteran equity-fund manager extolled the government-sponsored enterprises’ massive fourth quarter profits of almost $10 billion, called them “indispensable” to the mortgage insurance industry and reminded readers they continue to fulfill “their historic role of insuring adequate levels of liquidity to lenders of all sizes.” He also mentioned...
Fannie Mae announced its second deal using credit insurance risk transfer on the front end of the transaction. Most of the government-sponsored enerprise’s CIRT transactions have involved insurance contracts on pools of loans that have already been securitized. The new front-end CIRT deal will shift a portion of the credit risk on about $15 billion worth of single-family loans, significantly larger than Fannie’s first test of the structure back in October, which involved about $3.7 billion of single-family loans. This CIRT, like the first one, will be...
RSS