The Federal Open Market Committee this week voted to scale back the central bank’s purchases of agency MBS again, dropping the monthly growth target to $25 billion, but the deceleration is barely keeping even with the rapid slowdown in new MBS issuance. At its December meeting, the FOMC decided to drop its MBS purchases to a pace that would add $35 billion per month, and lowered that by another $5 billion at its January meeting. The program began in late 2012 at $40 billion a month. The central bank will continue to reinvest principal and interest payments on its holdings in the agency MBS market. The most recent available data show...[Includes two data charts]

New Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said this week that the U.S. central bank’s bond purchase program will likely end this fall as the Fed Open Market Committee announced, as expected, a further pullback in its agency MBS purchases. Beginning in April, the FOMC said it will add to its agency MBS holdings at a pace of $25 billion per month rather than $30 billion per month. If the slowdown continues at its current pace, the Fed will stop growing its MBS holdings late this summer. The FOMC also updated...

The agreement among Republicans, Democrats and the White House for the need to act and the heightened urgency to pass legislation before a potential shift in power after the mid-term elections could determine the outlook for housing reform legislation in 2014, according to analysts. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reform efforts in Congress and investor lawsuits are helping shape the housing debate this year, and the recently issued Johnson-Crapo draft legislation is the bill to watch going forward, said Bloomberg Industries analysts this week. The profitability of the two government-sponsored enterprises in 2013 not only fueled...

If Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are eventually liquidated, the federal government could reap between $170 billion and $234 billion in net proceeds, according to a new audit of the firms, but that doesn’t mean the junior preferred stockholders in the two will see a dime of that money. The newly released Johnson-Crapo mortgage finance reform bill provides no relief to investors in the junior preferred or owners of common stock in the two government-sponsored enterprises, leaving all liquidation proceeds to the U.S. Treasury, which owns the senior preferred shares. Over the past 18 months, several high-profile private-equity firms – Fairholme Capital, Pershing Square and Perry Capital, to name a few – have invested...

Publicly traded real estate investment trusts reported a 13.5 percent decline in their holdings of residential MBS during the fourth quarter, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis. The industry reported $264.8 billion of residential MBS at the end of 2013, a 26.4 percent drop from the fourth quarter of 2012. The five largest REIT MBS investors all reported double-digit drops during the final three months of 2013, while the mid-range companies generally had smaller declines and three smaller firms actually grew their portfolios. At the top of the table, Annaly Capital Management reported...[Includes one data chart]

The U.S. Supreme Court has added two more lawsuits to its growing list of securities cases by agreeing to take up an IndyMac MBS suit. In Public Employees’ Retirement System of Mississippi v. IndyMac MBS Inc. et al, SCOTUS has agreed to consider whether the filing of a class-action lawsuit tolls the three-year statute of repose under the Securities Act of 1933 or whether the statute is an absolute bar that cannot be suspended. Like a statute of limitations, a statute of repose cuts off...

Members of the Treasury Markets Practice Group are supportive of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s recent proposal to establish margin requirements for transactions in the “to be announced” market, seeing them as compatible with what the TMPG itself is trying to accomplish with the same products. According to the minutes of a recent meeting, TMPG members noted that FINRA’s proposed rule amendments would be binding across FINRA’s membership, which would further the objectives of the TMPG’s agency MBS margining recommendation and encourage wider adoption of margining practices over time. “While recognizing that the TMPG’s margining best practices go...

Favorable shifts in macroeconomic conditions have contributed to a rise in single-family rentals and an increase in the investment in these properties by institutional buyers, prompting Moody’s Investors Service to release its criteria for rating the emerging single-family rental securitization market. The criteria come four months after Moody’s rated Invitation Homes 2013-SFR. The rating agency awarded $278.7 million in triple-A ratings for the largest tranche of the deal. “A slowly improving economy will boost...

Private-equity firms such as Orange Capital and EJF Capital have been gobbling up shares in PHH Corp. the past year, believing the stock is undervalued. Among other things, “smart money” investors have noticed that the liquidation value of its mortgage servicing rights almost equals the entire company’s market capitalization rate. But that doesn’t mean PHH Corp. will be successful in its attempt to unlock shareholder value by selling off parts of the company, including its mortgage banking franchise and automobile fleet business. “The only thing that’s certain about PHH is that it’s trading below book value,” said one mortgage executive who has conducted business with the firm. Late this week, PHH common was selling...

Although investors and participants initially showed a great deal of interest in the fledgling market for bonds backed by single-family rental properties, rating agencies are starting to take a closer look at the business and don’t like everything they see. “Rising U.S. home prices have pushed down rental yields in many single-family rental markets, a trend that will likely discourage some institutional investors from buying distressed properties and converting them into rental units,” according to a recent report from Moody’s Investor Service. The rating agency adds...