For the most part, several different factions of the mortgage industry have applauded the move by the Federal Housing Finance Agency to allow Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to build some type of capital buffer. Now comes the hard part: the details. Early this week, FHFA Acting Deputy Director of the Division of Conservatorship Bob Ryan said in a speech that the capital buffer plan would entail a delay of dividend payments to the U.S. Treasury Department – not an elimination of them. No other specifics were provided...

This fall will mark – unless there’s divine intervention or a Kumbaya moment in Washington – the ninth anniversary of the federal takeover of Fannie and Freddie.

In other words, Ocwen should have told shareholders that there was an MOU with the MMC.

Ryan went on to say it would be a limited buffer, but it should be large enough to help cover and avoid a draw...

Several trade groups, investors and analysts quickly issued their take on Watt’s comments, but there were some notables missing in action: Pershing Square and Fairholme.

“Our assessment indicates that this change would not impact the MBS markets,” Fannie Mae said.

The MSR package is top-heavy in Massachusetts receivables at 94 percent…

The securitization of income-property mortgages nosedived in the first quarter of 2017, with most of the downturn in the volatile non-agency sector, according to an Inside MBS & ABS analysis. A total of $48.29 billion of MBS backed by commercial properties was issued in the first quarter, down 27.7 percent from the previous period. Although production was down 6.1 percent from the same period in 2016, it was close to the average quarterly volume of $49.35 billion that the market has produced since the beginning of 2014. The average for the 2011-2013 period was just $32.00 billion. Average volume is...[Includes one data table]

The Securities and Exchange Commission has opened an investigation into certain single-family rental securitizations and is requesting information from market participants, including Green River Capital, a subsidiary of a private mortgage insurance company. The investigation first came to light when Radian Group disclosed in a recent 10-Q filing that Green River received a letter from the SEC requesting information regarding broker price opinions that GRC provided on properties included in SFR transactions. Green River, which falls under Radian’s Clayton Holdings affiliate, is...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are soliciting industry feedback on a proposal designed to make their mainstay credit-risk transfer deals more accessible for real estate investment trusts and, to a lesser extent, overseas investors. REITs have nibbled at the CRT debt notes issued by the two government-sponsored enterprises over the past few years, but restrictions on their holdings of so-called non-REIT assets have limited their involvement. The GSEs, with the backing of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, have come up...