The Treasury report on housing-finance reform included a number of suggestions on how federal regulators could promote a level playing field between the GSEs and non-agency players.

Activity in the non-agency MBS market is resuming after a slowdown in the second half of August. Presale reports for five deals have been published this month, led by prime non-agency MBS.

Citi joined JPMorgan Chase as the second big bank to issue MBS backed by non-QMs. The deal was stocked with mortgages from Impac.

LendingHome in July issued its second fix-and-flip MBS of 2019. The deal was met with stronger demand than the security issued in March.

The real estate investment trust received a positive no-action letter from the SEC regarding mortgage servicing rights acquired as part of its mortgage banking activities.

The rating service made a couple of issuer-friendly tweaks to its MBS loss model criteria proposed in June. The rating service, for the first time, will con-sider catastrophic risk when assessing loans.

Several real estate investment trusts, including MFA Financial and Starwood Property Trust, are expanding their portfolio of non-qualified mortgages. The loans provide attractive returns, whether retained or bundled into an MBS.

Annaly and Chimera are generating strong returns aggregating mortgages, issuing non-agency MBS and retaining subordinate tranches from the deals. Chimera plans to be a regular issuer of non-agency MBS with GSE-eligible loans.