The regulatory relief bill recently passed by the Senate would reduce uncertainty for future ABS tied to Property Assessed Clean Energy financing programs, rating services said.

The agency MBS market continued to chug along in the fourth quarter of 2017, growing fast enough to offset the steady decline in non-agency product, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis.

Efforts to enhance disclosures on MBS and ABS in recent years have generated mixed results, according to industry participants. Inadequate disclosures helped contribute to the financial crisis, according to investors that suffered significant losses on MBS and ABS.

The significant gains of nonbank mortgage lenders in the government-backed mortgage market suggests that nonbank failures could be quite costly to the government and taxpayers, according to a paper authored by three Federal Reserve Board economists and two university researchers.

As the Federal Housing Finance Agency continues to evaluate alternative credit scoring mechanisms, some experts argue that the agency isn’t doing enough to promote an updated scoring system while others say the current system works just fine.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. have announced offerings of multiple residential reverse mortgage pools for sale to investors. The HUD pools are comprised of approximately 650 reverse mortgage notes with a total loan balance of about $136 million. The sale consists of due and payable first-lien reverse mortgages secured by single-family, vacant residential properties where all borrowers are deceased and none is survived by a non-borrowing spouse. The reverse-mortgage sale is the third offering of its type. As with past offerings, the sale will be by competitive bidding on April 11, 2018. The loans will be sold without FHA insurance and with servicing released. The loans are expected to be offered in regional pools. Meanwhile, the FDIC will unload in open auction 3,280 FHA-insured reverse-mortgage loans from the ...

The Department of Veterans Affairs has issued new guidance on a number of topics, including foreclosure relief in disaster areas, property management and servicing, lender’s payment or credit of veterans’ costs, acceptance of properties, redemption procedures, and reconveyance disputes. VA has extended the moratorium on foreclosures in areas that suffered the brunt of hurricanes Harvey, Maria and Irma from 180 days to 270 days to give more time for distressed homeowners with a VA mortgage to recover their financial footing. VA also extended the rescission date of guidance regarding its reconveyance dispute process and servicer statutory redemption procedures from Jan. 1, 2018, to Oct. 1, 2020. VA issued additional servicing guidance on real estate-owned properties and direct loan portfolio (VA’s national portfolio), which is currently serviced by ...

Ginnie Mae this week urged issuers to ensure that electronic protections against unauthorized automated payments from accounts do not impede the agency’s ability to draft funds from issuers’ accounts to pay investors. In a letter to stakeholders, Ginnie cautioned issuers to make certain that the ACH debit blocks they have in place would not hinder the agency from accessing funds in the central principal-and-interest custodial accounts on the 15th and 20th of each month. ACH debit blocks help prevent fraud by barring unauthorized payments from accounts and allowing companies to designate a specific person to post electronic debits to the payee’s account In addition, Ginnie asked issuers to implement a process of checking whether funds have been drawn at 7 a.m. EST on each 15th and 20th day of the month. “It is critical that each issuer also have in place a process for ...

Issuers of MBS and ABS know that the reporting of the London Interbank Offered Rate could end in 2021, but there’s no clear plan at this point for how to address the issue.

The White House this spring is expected to officially nominate Michael Bright, acting president of Ginnie Mae, to formally become the agency’s chief, according to industry officials