The White House believes that the current housing finance system, where the government guarantees more than 80 percent of all mortgages through Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and FHA, is unsustainable.
According to an IRS private-letter ruling, certain excess servicing rights would constitute a real-estate asset, and income from the spread would be treated as interest on obligations secured by mortgages on real property.
A federal district court in New York last week ruled that a landmark discrimination lawsuit, the first to connect racial discrimination to the securitization of mortgage-backed securities, can move forward against Morgan Stanley. A July 25 ruling by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in Adkins v. Morgan Stanley denied in part the investment bank’s motion to dismiss the case, which alleges violations of the Fair Housing Act and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. The putative class-action suit was filed...
The wrath of Wall Street has descended upon Richmond, CA, after the city council adopted a plan using eminent domain to seize underwater mortgages, as a last resort, and resell them to beleaguered homeowners at a lower price. The American Securitization Forum, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association and the Association of Mortgage Investors condemned Richmond’s decision to implement an April 2 agreement with Mortgage Resolution Partners (MRP) to use eminent domain to address the city’s severe foreclosure problem. The city became the first municipality in the country to adopt such an approach, though not the first to consider the idea. Richmond, like many California cities and municipalities, was hit...
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