New disclosures on risk-sharing transactions from Freddie Mac provide some details on the automated valuation model used by the government-sponsored enterprise to determine home prices and loan-to-value ratios. Freddie’s AVM – Home Value Explorer – provides home price valuations that are a little higher than the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, according to analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. The analysts based their findings on estimates of current LTV ratios that Freddie recently added to monthly loan-level disclosures on Structured Agency Credit Risk transactions. LTV ratios based on Freddie’s AVM were...
Regarding the omission of cell phone numbers and email addresses, one Florida-based mortgage executive said, “It drove us crazy – of all things not to have in this day and age.”
Commercial banks and savings institutions continued to load up on residential MBS during the second quarter of 2016, pushing their investment in the sector to a new high, according to a new analysis and ranking by Inside MBS & ABS. Banks and thrifts reported MBS holdings of $1.684 trillion as of the end of June, a 1.4 percent increase since the previous quarter. These are long-term holdings in banks’ held-to-maturity and available-for-sale portfolios. The industry held another $46.02 billion of MBS in their trading accounts. Not surprisingly, all of the gain came in agency MBS, particularly pass-through securities issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The industry’s aggregate holdings of these securities, $867.64 billion, were up 4.1 percent from the ...
The average daily trading volume in agency MBS totaled $219.3 billion in July, the best reading in 18 months, according to the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association. However, the sequential improvement was a mere 3.30 percent. Then again, any gain is better than none. For all of 2016, the worst reading came in March at $189.4 billion. The strong showing (relatively speaking) comes as the primary market has produced a better-than-expected $890 billion for the first six months of 2016. Some industry executives believe loan originations could top $2 trillion this year, which would increase the supply of outstanding MBS. For the past few years there has been a debate in the industry about the significance of lower trading ...
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