The Securities and Exchange Commission has given Royal Bank of Canada the green light to issue residential mortgage covered bonds registered in the U.S. The SEC granted permission through a no-action letter shortly after RBC submitted plans for a program through which covered bonds backed by U.S. home loans will be offered to U.S. investors. RBC is a “foreign private issuer” under U.S. securities laws and, as a Form S-3 issuer, has a registered shelf with the SEC through which it can offer multiple securities on an immediate, continuous or even on a delayed basis. Covered bonds are debt securities backed by cash...

Banks and thrifts held $150.1 billion of non-mortgage ABS in their investment portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2012, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis of call report data. Commercial banks accounted for $135.4 billion of that amount, which was down 2.1 percent from the end of last year. Thrifts did not report their ABS holdings until the first quarter of 2012. The biggest category of bank and thrift ABS holdings were consumer loans – mostly student loans – which accounted for 32.6 percent of the institutions’ ABS investments. Credit card ABS...(Includes one data chart)

Improved subprime performance and a lack of new originations have prompted major nonbank firms involved in subprime servicing to expand their portfolios with acquisitions of nonperforming agency mortgages. Ocwen Financial, Nationstar Mortgage and Walter Investment Management, among others, have all recently acquired large volumes of nonperforming agency mortgages. An estimated $525.0 billion in subprime mortgages were outstanding as of the end of the first quarter of 2012, according to an Inside Nonconforming Markets analysis ... [Includes one data chart]

The still-developing market for real estate-owned property rentals is starting to get crowded. A number of firms have formed in recent weeks hoping to benefit from low prices on REO properties. Homebuilder Beazer Homes announced this month that it formed a private real estate investment trust to acquire, refurbish and lease single-family homes on a large scale in select markets. Beazer Pre-Owned Rental Homes was arranged by affiliates of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and has approximately $85 million in funding ...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have made significant progress in recovering from the losses on the nonprime mortgages they purchased and guaranteed before 2009. In the first quarter of 2012, both of the government-sponsored enterprises touted that mortgages acquired in and after 2009 now account for the majority of their single-family holdings. The GSEs held a combined $386.01 billion in nonprime purchased/guaranteed mortgages as well as nonprime mortgage-backed securities at the end of the first quarter of 2012 ... [Includes one data chart]

Real estate industry groups are urging the FHA to align a forthcoming proposed rule for private transfer fees with a final rule recently adopted by the Federal Housing Finance Agency. In a joint letter to Acting FHA Commissioner Carol Galante, the National Association of Realtors and the Institute of Real Estate Management expressed support for the FHFA rule on transfer-fee covenants and asked that a mortgagee’s compliance with the FHFA rule be deemed as compliance with the FHA’s own rule regarding such covenants. The two groups urged the FHA to ...

Congress may be no closer to solving the problem of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac than it was when the two government-sponsored enterprises were put in conservatorship in 2008, but many observers say the capabilities of the two GSEs should be preserved and improved. “Energy spent trying to get rid of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is a waste,” said Sean Dobson, the CEO of Amherst Securities Group, at the American Securitization Forum Annual Meeting this week in Washington. The GSEs still have sizable infrastructure for effective securitization, and “it would be a shame to take all of that and throw it away,” he...

Even as the Federal Housing Finance Agency deliberates writedowns of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgages, the agency has agreed to allow the government-sponsored enterprises to participate in a California program that applies principal reduction in modifying distressed loans. The FHFA has confirmed Fannie and Freddie’s participation in the California Housing Finance Agency’s Keep Your Home California Program, a $2 billion foreclosure prevention effort established under the U.S. Treasury’s Hardest Hit Fund. Earlier this month, state officials announced they are dropping the requirement from the...

Mortgage buybacks may have declined significantly during the first quarter of 2012, but a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis shows that the volume of unresolved repurchase demands continued to set new record highs. Bank call-report data show that financial institutions reported a total of $4.12 billion in mortgage repurchases and indemnifications during the first quarter of this year. That was down 23.0 percent from the fourth quarter of 2011 and the lowest quarterly volume since the beginning of last year. It is particularly encouraging since the first-quarter data...(Includes two data charts)

Banks and thrifts added some $67.2 billion in residential MBS to their investment portfolios during the first quarter of 2012, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS ranking and analysis. The increase amounted to a 4.3 percent gain from bank and thrift MBS holdings at the end of 2011, and raised the industry’s total investment to a record $1.634 trillion. It marked the first time since 2004 that banks and thrifts owned more than a quarter of the MBS market. The biggest increase was in holdings of agency pass-through securities, which rose 6.2 percent from the fourth quarter to $974.4...(Includes two data charts)