Everyone seems eager to see the private sector re-enter the MBS market, but it simply isn't ready or willing, and won't be for a very, very long time, according to experts in an American Securitization Forum seminar held this week. "From our perspective as an investor, one of the things that you really have to think about when you look at the mortgage market is what investors, big institutional investors, are interested in purchasing. The biggest thing in our mind is liquidity," said Nancy Handal, a managing director at Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. "We learned a ton as investors from the crisis in 2008," she continued...

U.S. banks are generally more liquid than Basel III liquidity standards would suggest thanks in large part to the treatment of banks' large portfolios of GSE-related securities, according to Fitch Ratings.

The so-called RMBS 2.0 features squeaky-clean collateral and high-definition transparency, but industry experts say, more importantly, that after years of mostly talk there is now some momentum in the market. Adam Yarnold, a managing director at Barclays Capital, said there are half a dozen residential mortgage conduits – including his firm – that are buying loans. During a panel session at the secondary market conference sponsored by the Mortgage Bankers Association, he noted that more broker/dealers are in the wings. Barclays is buying high-quality loans with loan-to-value ratios below 70 percent and debt-to-income ratios that come close to the standards proposed by federal regulators for qualified residential mortgages, Yarnold said. The company hosts a web-based portal through which it locks loans and...

The Securities and Exchange Commission is reportedly looking into the securitization and put-back practices of Credit Suisse and JPMorgan Chase in connection with alleged recoveries from defective mortgages repurchased by originators from securitization trusts. Credit Suisse confirmed to Inside MBS & ABS a disclosure made by bond insurer MBIA Insurance Corp. that the Zurich-based bank had received a subpoena from the SEC seeking data on repurchases of certain defective loans. The disclosure was made in a lawsuit against three Credit Suisse units – Credit Suisse Securities, DLJ Mortgage Capital, Inc. and Select Portfolio Servicing – which MBIA filed with the New York State Supreme Court on April 29. The suit seeks to compel Credit Suisse to turn over data which MBIA believes would bolster its fraud and breach-of-contract claims against...

&PTop rating agencies continue to have different requirements for issuers to obtain the most favorable ratings on certain transactions, including the all-important criterion of credit enhancement. The latest manifestation of this dynamic involved a recent $1.45 billion servicer advance receivable transaction by American Home Mortgage Servicing Inc., a deal that passed muster with DBRS and Standard & Poor’s. But AHMS withdrew the deal from consideration at Fitch Ratings because of that company’s more conservative rating criteria. DBRS and S gave most components of the transaction a triple-A rating. That included two $325 million senior term notes and a $600 million senior variable funding note. The deal included subordinate term notes of $150 million and $50 million. The primary assets of...

In what may be an omen of a deeper slide of volume in the months to come, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac saw their issuance of new mortgage-backed securities drop 21.4 percent in the first quarter of the year from the prior period, the latest data from the Inside Mortgage Finance GSE MarketScope show...[includes one full-page chart]