Rates for non-agency MBS and consumer ABS are expected to trend lower after the Federal Open Market Committee pulled a fast one on Wall Street this week by contradicting an expected “tapering” of its asset purchase program. Instead, the nation’s central bank announced it was continuing its ongoing purchases of $40 billion worth of agency MBS per month and $45 billion in longer-term Treasury securities. Prior to the FOMC’s meeting this week, the consensus view was that the Federal Reserve would pare monthly purchases of Treasury bonds by $10 billion and agency MBS by $5 billion beginning in October, according to analyst Isaac Boltansky at Compass Point Research & Trading LLC. “The housing sector has been...

Lenders and issuers already comply with most of the requirements in the recently re-proposed rule on risk retention as well as the disclosure standards under the proposed revision to Regulation AB, according to a former Treasury Department official. Darius Kingsley, currently a managing director and co-general counsel at JPMorgan Chase and former chief of Treasury’s homeownership preservation office, said the risk-retention rule will likely prompt increased issuance of non-agency MBS. “I think it’s...

It’s not a surprise that FHFA has been quiet about its not-overly popular state-level g-fee proposal, according to Robert Bostrom, a shareholder at the law firm of Greenberg Traurig and a former general counsel at Freddie Mac.

Real estate investment trusts that focus on investing in residential MBS continued to see declines in their portfolios during the second quarter, but their earnings outlook may have improved somewhat this week, analysts say. Residential mortgage REITs held a combined $327.3 billion of single-family MBS as of the end of the second quarter, according to a new market analysis by Inside MBS & ABS. That was down 5.4 percent from the previous quarter, and it was the third straight quarterly decline since REIT MBS holdings reached a high of $374.2 billion in September 2012. REIT MBS holdings are...[Includes one data chart]

A federal district court judge in California this week dismissed without prejudice an action brought by securitization trustees to stop the City of Richmond, CA, and its partners from implementing an eminent domain strategy to seize and refinance underwater mortgages. Judge Charles Breyer of the U.S. District for Northern California said he decided to dismiss the case rather than hold it in abeyance because “the plaintiffs’ claims are not yet ripe for adjudication.” In other words, one can’t sue over something that has not happened or is not bound to happen. In fact, certain developments, such as the finalization of an agency rule or the resolution of pending suits in other jurisdictions, may leave...

Five years after it filed for Chapter 11 protection, the remains of the investment bank Lehman Brothers is asking a New York bankruptcy judge to rebuff a legal claim by Freddie Mac that would put the GSE at the front of the line of creditors. In papers filed with U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan last week, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. said that Freddie is not entitled to a “priority recovery” under Lehman’s confirmed plan of reorganization as the GSE seeks to recover $1.2 billion in unpaid loans. Freddie had been...

The industry believes there are problems in the QM rule's content and requirements as well as in developing policies and procedures to support the measure and implement it.

The implementation date for lower GSE loan limits is being shifted to the end of the first quarter, or so we hear. Meanwhile, Citadel enters the market for stand-alone seconds.

Higher-priced mortgages accounted for 3.0 percent of the number of mortgages originated in 2012, according to a Federal Reserve analysis of Home Mortgage Disclosure Act Data released this week. The loans had a 3.7 percent share of HMDA originations last year and a 26.0 percent share in 2006. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau last week finalized a number of tweaks to pending mortgage rules. Adjustments were made to the servicing rule, loan originator compensation rule, definitions for ... [Includes three briefs]

The Office of Management and Budget has cleared a proposed rule setting qualified mortgage standards for FHA-insured single-family mortgages for issuance in the coming weeks. The OMB signed off on the proposed standards on Sept. 12 and the Department of Housing and Urban Development has a few more refinements to perform before publishing the proposal for public comment. HUD declined to discuss the contents of the proposed standards or indicate a timetable for a final QM rule. Industry participants, on the other hand, said they would be surprised if ...