The repo is contingent upon PennyMac – a publicly traded REIT – maintaining minimum tangible net worth of $860 million and minimum unrestricted cash of $40 million.

Roughly $164.77 billion of securities backed by commercial mortgages were issued last year, down just 0.6 percent from 2013, which was a banner year.

Roughly 73 percent of the mortgages in the deal have interest-only terms.

With interest rates at exceptionally low levels in recent years, borrowers have been reluctant to choose adjustable-rate mortgages. For those opting for ARMs, hybrids remain the most popular, according to results from the annual ARM survey recently released by Freddie Mac. ARMs accounted for 4.6 percent of the $921.72 billion in mortgage-backed securities issued by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae in 2014 ... [Includes one data chart]

The FHFA is spending much of its time studying both the liquidity of servicing rights and the operational capacity of GSE servicers.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are more than halfway towards reaching their goal of reducing their retained mortgage portfolios to no more than $250 billion each by 2018, according to Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mel Watt. Testifying before the House Financial Services Committee this week, Watt said the two government-sponsored enterprises have developed plans to meet their investment targets, $250 billion each, in accordance with terms of their conservatorship. As of Sept. 30, 2014, Freddie’s portfolio stood...

Production of structured finance deals backed by agency single-family pass-through securities fell sharply during the fourth quarter of 2014, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae issued a total of $44.41 billion of real estate mortgage investment conduits during the fourth quarter, down 25.5 percent from the previous period. Ginnie and Freddie, the most active agency REMIC issuers for the year, were responsible for most of the decline. On a year-to-date basis, Fannie production was...[Includes one data chart]

The European Central Bank’s launch of a Fed-like quantitative easing program will likely keep the yield spread flat and interest rates low. The ECB plans monthly purchases of €60 billion in ABS and covered bonds issued by central governments, agencies and banks in the euro zone. U.S. experts have been mulling...

Ocwen Financial may have to settle with investors in non-agency MBS it services to avoid having the underlying servicing rights being yanked away by a trustee, according to investors and analysts tracking the situation. Early this week, Ocwen attorney Richard Jacobsen sent a letter to the law firm of Gibbs & Bruns, sternly telling the attorneys for some of the RMBS holders that there is no basis for default under the trust agreements. Gibbs & Bruns is working...

Securitization of income-property mortgages continued to post strong new issuance numbers in 2014, with the non-agency commercial MBS sector doing particularly well, according to a new market analysis by Inside MBS & ABS. A total of $164.77 billion of securities backed by commercial mortgages were issued last year, down just 0.6 percent from 2013’s level, which was the high-water mark since just before the financial collapse. And non-agency CMBS production was up 11.6 percent in 2014, at $96.48 billion. Agency MBS issuance fell...[Includes one data chart]