In a few months, mortgage insurance giant Radian Group will close on its $305 million cash purchase of Clayton Holdings, ending the “independent” status of one of the nation’s largest MBS due-diligence firms. Almost all the larger due-diligence companies have been gobbled up by larger players over the past 18 months. Most of the acquirers have other interests in the residential finance industry and are betting on the eventual return of the non-agency MBS market. That could be...

Standard & Poor’s ranked as the top rating service in the non-mortgage ABS market and also claimed the top spot in the sputtering non-agency MBS sphere, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS ranking of first-quarter activity. S&P rated seven of the 11 non-agency MBS issued in the first three months of 2014, or 78.0 percent based on dollar volume. Once the perennial leader in non-agency MBS ratings, S&P’s market share has been around 40.0 percent in recent years. DBRS ranked...[Includes two data charts]

Standard & Poor’s is seeking comments on a proposal for assessing operational risk posed by key transaction parties such as servicers in structured finance transactions. The request for comments follows a similar request from S&P in 2011. “We made a number of changes to the previous request for comment in view of the responses we received and our desire to enhance the risk considerations under the proposed operational risk framework,” said Joseph Sheridan, S&P’s criteria officer. “We also expanded the proposal’s scope. Where we believe operational risk could lead to credit instability and a ratings impact, the proposal would call for rating caps that limit the securitization’s maximum potential rating.” The rating service is proposing...

Bayview Asset Management announced late last week that it will delay the issuance of a non-agency MBS backed by re-performing subprime mortgages with an unpaid principal balance of $215 million. The delay was prompted by concerns about property valuations and loss severity. Standard & Poor’s issued a presale report on Bayview Opportunity Master Fund Trust 2014-9RPL on April 28, and the deal was scheduled to close May 12. The MBS was set to receive a AAA rating from S&P, but the rating service said it withdrew its preliminary rating due to Bayview’s extension of the planned closing date. The delay in closing was prompted...

The retained mortgage portfolios of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac continued to decline through attrition during the first quarter of 2014 as the two government-sponsored enterprises reported some $9.3 billion in profit, due largely to non-agency MBS legal settlements. The two GSEs held a combined mortgage-investment portfolio of $902.1 billion at the end of March, down 5.2 percent from the previous quarter. The biggest decline was in MBS holdings, down 7.3 percent, including an 8.3 percent drop in Fannie’s and Freddie’s holdings of their own MBS. Wall Street investment bankers and non-agency MBS issuers paid...[Includes one data chart]

Issuers of jumbo mortgage-backed securities could increase their activity in the second quarter of 2014 after two consecutive quarters of suppressed issuance. Pricing for new jumbo MBS has improved, according to industry participants, though many expect issuance to remain constrained. In April, Redwood Trust issued a $346.30 million jumbo MBS that priced at the end of the first quarter. At the end of April, Credit Suisse issued a $271.73 million jumbo MBS, according to rating reports ...

Issuers of non-agency mortgage-backed securities warn that the latest disclosure proposal from the Securities and Exchange Commission could completely shut down issuance of non-agency MBS. Since 2010, the SEC has been working on disclosure requirements for MBS and other structured finance products. The regulator was set to approve a final rule in February that would revise asset-level disclosure requirements under Regulation AB but instead re-proposed a portion ...

Radian Group announced this week that it plans to acquire Clayton Holdings for $305 million. Among other services, Clayton provides due diligence on non-agency mortgage-backed securities. Radian said the transaction is expected to close this summer and the firm expects to break even on the purchase this year. Radian said Clayton will continue to serve its existing clients, grow in its current operations areas and explore opportunities to market new ... [Includes eight briefs]

The House Appropriations Committee this week approved the FY 2015 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development funding bill, which, among other, things contains a provision prohibiting federal housing agencies from facilitating the use of eminent domain in resolving foreclosure problems. Specifically, the FHA, Ginnie Mae and the Department of Housing and Urban Development would not be allowed to use funds appropriated by Congress to “insure, securitize or establish a federal guarantee” of any mortgage or mortgage-backed security that refinances or replaces a mortgage that has been subject to eminent domain condemnation or seizure by a state, municipality or any other political subdivision of a state. In addition, the bill would prohibit the use of appropriated funds or any receipts or amounts collected under any FHA program to implement the FHA’s new Homeowners Armed with Knowledge (HAWK) program. HUD has proposed to ...

Several big banks are in various phases of negotiation with the federal government to resolve alleged violations of federal and state securities laws in connection with legacy non-agency MBS. Bank of America is in new settlement talks with the Department of Justice over residential MBS backed mostly by faulty loans stemming from BofA’s acquisition of Countrywide Financial Corp. and Merrill Lynch & Co., which securitized the loans and sold the bonds to investors. The tentative talks could cost...