The Financial Stability Oversight Council wants to take a close look at the secondary mortgage market but isn’t letting on about its agenda. Maybe a “housing czar” will come out of this, some wonder.

With overnight funding in the agency repo market hovering around 15 basis points and term repo rates a shade above the one-month LIBOR, yields for agency mREITs could edge upward, KBW analysts predict.

Ginnie Mae will soon start accepting electronic promissory notes and other digitized loan files as collateral for its MBS program.

Despite the dampening effect of the coronavirus early in the second quarter, total MBS and ABS issuance soared to a record $790 billion. Agency single-family MBS accounted for 94% of total issuance. (Includes four data charts.)

The company believes delivering loans to agency MBS helps it be a “high velocity, capital light and cash generating” operation. This year, the firm has held mortgages on its balance sheet for as few as eight days.

Federal regulators have delayed their review of risk-retention requirements until next year. Also, most regulatory actions planned for MBS and ABS fall into the “long-term” category.

Economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that having both to-be-announced and specified pools markets increase yields for MBS in both places.

The CRT market is showing signs of post-pandemic recovery. But Freddie Mac’s former CEO believes the re-proposed capital rule for the GSEs could make the whole CRT program pointless.

Retail platforms benefited the most from a huge increase in agency refinance business from the first to the second quarter. First-time buyers held on in a precarious housing market. (Includes two data charts.)

Under the CFPB proposal, which aims to establish a level playing field between the GSEs and the non-agency market, most loans will still be QMs, but there might be fewer incentives to sell the loans to the GSEs.