The Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee this week met Wall Street’s expectations that it will continue to plow principal payments from its holdings of agency MBS back into agency MBS until sometime after the central bank decides to raise its federal funds target range. “The timing will depend on how economic and financial conditions and the economic outlook evolve,” said the FOMC after its two-day meeting concluded Wednesday afternoon. In the meantime, the Fed’s tapering of its quantitative easing program will continue...
The non-agency MBS market remains stuck in the post-crisis doldrums, showing no signs of recovering, according to experts participating at this week’s Bipartisan Policy Center’s Housing Summit in Washington, DC. Efforts to ignite the growth in non-agency securitization channels to help reduce the government’s role in housing finance and draw back private capital have produced little result. Except for sporadic twitches, thanks to a smattering of deals backed by jumbo loans, the non-agency MBS market is barely alive, panelists said. The government, which is working to revive the non-agency market, sees...
SIFMA did not take a stance on whether g-fees should be adjusted up or down. Instead, the trade group stressed that it is unclear how a change to g-fees would impact non-agency activity.
Among the many challenges associated with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s pending integrated disclosure rule is expanded legal liability for lenders based on the more threatening Truth in Lending Act, as opposed to the more palatable liability framework of the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act. During a webinar sponsored last week by Inside Mortgage Finance, Rich Horn, a partner with the Dentons law firm and one of the architects of the rule while a regulator at the CFPB, noted there is no private right of action for integrated disclosures under RESPA. On the other hand, with TILA liability, “there is...
Purchase-mortgage originations jumped 44.3 percent from the first quarter of 2014 to the second quarter, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis and ranking, with first-time homebuyers representing about 43.9 percent of agency activity in the sector. Purchase mortgages accounted for 64.1 percent of total mortgage production during the second quarter. That’s the highest purchase share since 1995, when financing for home purchases represented 67.2 percent of total originations. At the midway point of 2014, purchase-mortgage originations were up...[Includes four data charts]
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