The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged three MBS traders with fraud for inflating the prices of MBS they bought from and sold to investors. Former traders Ross Shapiro, Michael Gramins and Tyler Peters allegedly defrauded customers to illegally generate millions of dollars in revenue for their ex-employer, Nomura Holdings International. As senior traders with Nomura’s residential MBS desk since 2009, the brokers arranged trades between customers, meaning that each would buy MBS from one customer and resell them for profit to another customer. As head trader, Shapiro arranged MBS and manufactured housing ABS trades. According to the SEC, the traders’ illicit pricing took place...

Freddie Mac’s Structured Agency Credit Risk deals and Fannie Mae’s Connecticut Avenue Security transactions have accounted for about 90 percent of risk transfers by the two government-sponsored enterprises. But the Federal Housing Finance Agency is pushing the GSEs to test new structures. FHFA said in a recent report that its longer term goal for the STACR and CAS products is for the GSEs to transition from debt issuance to credit-linked notes. That structure would be similar to enterprise debt issuances, but a trust would issue the note instead of the GSE. Principal and interest payments on the STACR and CAS debt issuances are...

Regulatory fears are driving the desire by some owners/CEOs to exit the mortgage business, but we’ve heard that refrain before.

Fannie Mae launched the Home Purchase Sentiment Index this week to give monthly updates on the direction of the housing market from a consumers point of view. Results showed that attitudes toward the current home-selling climate have dipped back to their April 2015 level thanks to recent rising mortgage rates and economic concerns, according to Doug Duncan, Fannie’s chief economist.The index will be released on or around the seventh day of each month. The HPSI takes results from Fannie’s consumer-focused National Housing Survey to measure current attitudes toward the housing market. This index is different from other consumer economic sentiment indices because it’s devoted exclusively to housing. Fannie said it will help industry players make better informed business decisions. The GSE constructed...

Moody’s Investors Service recently upgraded three early GSE risk-sharing transactions from 2013 and 2014 that performed better than the rating service initially expected. Freddie Mac’s STACR 2013-DN2 and STACR 2014-DN1 along with Fannie Mae’s CAS 2014-C01, each designed to provide credit protection against the performance of reference pools of prime first-lien conforming mortgages, were upgraded. These are different from a typical residential mortgage backed security transaction in that note holders aren’t entitled to receive cash from the mortgage loans in the reference pools. Instead, Moody’s said the timing and amount of principal and interest that Freddie or Fannie are obligated to pay on the notes are linked specifically to the performance of the mortgage loans in the reference pool.

Fannie Mae revealed last week that New Jersey Capital, a non-profit organization, was the winner of the GSE’s first small non-performing loan pool geared toward non-profits and minority- and -women-owned businesses. The “community impact pool” auction was for $10 million of nonperforming loans. The pool, first marketed back in July, was designed to include geographically focused, high-occupancy collateral where bidders have a longer than usual time to participate in hopes of attracting diverse participation. The average loan size was $143,572 and the mortgages were delinquent for three years on average. The transaction is expected to close Oct. 26. The non-profit organization’s president, Wayne Meyer, said the pool will help the organization expand NJCC’s innovative foreclosure mitigation and prevention programs in Florida...

Fannie Mae recently changed the way self-employment income is verified when the borrower doesn’t have a history of business income distributions. The set of changes was updated in the GSE’s selling guide and shows a new way that income from self-employment can be both calculated and documented. As an alternative to the previous verification method of a documented distribution history, the lender now just needs to confirm that the borrower has access to the business income and that there is adequate liquidity in the business to support withdrawal of earnings. Additionally, only the most recent year of individual and business income federal tax returns will be required for certain Desktop Underwriter case...

Former Fannie executive Tim Rood, now chairman and founder of the Collingwood Group, said "the current posture by the administration is pretty indefensible.”

Although the bulk market has faced headwinds in recent weeks, the “flow” servicing market has been “robust,” Piercy said.