The rating services will put an emphasis on documentation of compliance with requirements for qualified mortgages and new ability-to-repay provisions. Credit-enhancement requirements appear as though they will be unchanged for the majority of jumbo MBS issued beginning in 2014, though issuers might have to make adjustments to prove to the rating services that they are compliant with new requirements from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. “Since most of what is being originated today already meets the standards of the rules, DBRS believes that the real challenge lies in unequivocally demonstrating QM and ATR compliance to the market and establishing confidence in the soundness of the systems and procedures that will be used to determine and ensure compliance,” DBRS said. The rating service recently released...

Real estate investment trusts that focus on investing in MBS held a combined $306.3 billion of mortgage securities in portfolio at the end of the third quarter, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis. That total was down 6.4 percent from the end of June, as the industry has lost nearly all of the huge volume of MBS that were acquired in early 2012. At the end of 2011, REITs held $297.5 billion of MBS and over the next six months grew their combined portfolio by $76.7 billion, reaching a record $375.2 billion at the midway point in 2012. It’s been...[Includes one data chart]

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Popular Democracy have filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act to compel the Federal Housing Finance Agency to provide details about its efforts to block municipalities from using eminent domain to prevent foreclosures. Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the lawsuit seeks information regarding the FHFA’s relationship with big banks and MBS investors and whether such interests influenced the agency’s opposition. The suit was filed on behalf of community housing advocates in California, New Jersey and New York. Certain municipalities with large African-American and Latino populations, including Richmond, CA, and Irvington, NJ, are considering...

New residential MBS production represented 78.4 percent of primary-market mortgage originations during the first nine months of 2013, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis. A total of $1.243 trillion of residential MBS were issued during the first three quarters of this year, with only $12.2 billion coming from the non-agency MBS market. At the same time, an estimated $1.585 trillion of new home loans were made by lenders, yielding a 78.4 percent securitization rate. The securitization rate was...[Includes one data chart]

Severe decreases in the FHA loan limits in numerous counties across the country have spurred industry demand for the Department of Housing and Urban Development to disclose the methodology and process it used to determine the new loan limits. Although HUD’s announcement of lower FHA loan limits for 2014 had been long expected, mortgage industry participants were caught off guard by the substantial reductions in FHA loan limits caused by the statutory change in how the limits are calculated and by revised median house prices. For 2014, HUD announced that the national ceiling limit for single-family mortgages in high-cost areas would decline to ... [1 chart]

In the third quarter of 2013, the level of home-mortgage debt outstanding grew for the first time since early 2008 as the housing industry continued to climb out of the crater. The Federal Reserve this week announced there was $9.864 trillion of single-family mortgages outstanding at the end of September, a tiny 0.1 percent increase from the previous quarter. But after four and half years of decline, the gain seemed monumental. The central bank noted that all the increase was in first mortgages, while the supply of home-equity loans outstanding continued to shrink. Servicing attached to Ginnie Mae, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac programs continued...[Includes one data chart]

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae issued a combined $82.33 billion in new single-family MBS during November, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS ranking and analysis. New MBS issuance by the three agencies was off 12.0 percent from October, continuing a steady downturn that’s been under way since April 2013. Production last month was off a whopping 58.7 percent from November 2012, when Fannie and Freddie volume spurted higher as issuers maneuvered to avoid a pending increase in MBS guaranty fees charged by the two government-sponsored enterprises. Tumbling refinance activity was...[Includes two data charts]

The Financial Accounting Standards Board has begun meeting with various industry groups to get a clearer sense of where it needs to go to develop the most appropriate accounting treatment for to-be-announced transactions. Last Friday, FASB met with both the Mortgage Bankers Association and the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association to vet some of the board’s tentative decisions on its project for accounting for repos, dollar rolls and TBA transactions, and the likely effect those decisions could have. Meetings with other groups have taken place...

Underwriting standards for loans in commercial MBS are loosening due to competition among issuers for volume, according to industry analysts. Issuers have also removed loans from two recent commercial MBS transactions due to pressure to come to the market quickly. “Increasing competition among commercial MBS loan originators raises the risk that they will further lower underwriting standards from the more stringent practices used in early second-generation commercial MBS 2.0 deals,” said Tad Philipp, director of commercial real estate research at Moody’s Investors Service. Analysts at Fitch Ratings said...

A Manhattan federal court this week approved a proposed settlement between Residential Capital and the Federal Housing Finance Agency that both clears the way for the former conduit to exit bankruptcy and brings the FHFA one step closer to completing its massive legal action against some of the nation’s top financial institutions.Judge Martin Glenn of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York approved the agreement, which is tied to a settlement the FHFA reached with Ally Financial, ResCap’s former parent, in late October.