The megabanks – Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and U.S. Bank – ranked first through fourth, respectively, with a combined agency market share of 40.3 percent at Sept. 30.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac rolled into their eighth year of government conservatorship pushing forward the two major reforms they can accomplish under their existing charters: selling off a significant portion of the credit risk on their current business and building a new MBS platform. Top officials from the two government-sponsored enterprises urged the industry to be patient about the launch of the common securitization platform and, a little further down the road, the single security for GSE to-be-announced MBS. “It will happen...
A number of factors are making new MBS in the to-be-announced market less attractive to investors than MBS issued a few years ago, according to a report from Deutsche Bank Securities. “Aggressive servicers keep picking up market share, credit quality keeps softening and loan balances edge up,” the analysts said. “It adds up to declining quality for TBA MBS.” While those trends certainly aren’t new, Deutsche Bank said...
The Federal Housing Finance Agency is toying with the idea of “grandfathering” the membership of captive insurance affiliates in the Federal Home Loan Bank system, while blocking out others, according to industry observers tracking the matter. Such a final rule would benefit MBS-investing real estate investment trusts that gained entry through a captive. A few years back, several REITs found a loophole in the FHLBank membership rules and exploited it before the FHFA put a moratorium on new captives joining the system. The moratorium expired...