MBA chief Dave Stevens noted: “We’ve seen that before, when enforcement does replace regulation, and that’s our greatest concern.”

The supply of residential MBS in the market grew tepidly in the second quarter of 2015, but not enough to increase the overall securitization rate for home mortgages. A total of $6.335 trillion of single-family MBS were outstanding at the end of June, a slim 0.1 percent increase from the previous quarter. The supply of MBS has been bouncing slightly higher and lower over the past six quarters, without gaining much traction. With total home mortgage debt outstanding climbing by 0.4 percent during the second quarter, the share of securitized loans fell...[Includes two data tables]

Investors at the ABS East conference sponsored by Information Management Network last week in Miami largely agreed that many MBS and ABS sectors are stronger than they were before the crisis in terms of issuance and certainly in terms of performance. While the investor base for securities has declined from the boom times of 10 years ago, there are also fewer distressed sellers. “You tend to see that bonds are held in strong hands, which makes for a strong underpinning,” said Alessandro Pagani, a portfolio manager and head of securitized assets at Loomis Sayles. “It makes for a pretty good balance between supply and demand.” John Vibert, a managing director at Prudential Fixed Income, said...

The pricing disclosures mandated by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority for ABS have had a mixed impact on the market, according to industry participants, with many claiming that the transparency has reduced liquidity. In June, FINRA started reporting post-trade price information for ABS via the Trade Reporting and Compliance Engine, better known as TRACE. The disclosures include the CUSIP, price and volume, all disclosed within 45 minutes after a trade is made. Actual volume is disclosed for trades below $10 million while trades above that amount are noted as “$10+ million.” The disclosures apply to publically-registered ABS along with deals in the private-placement 144A market. At the ABS East conference held by Information Management Network last week in Miami, Rishi Kapur, a managing director at Babson Capital, said...

The average daily trading volume for agency MBS fell slightly to $187.6 billion in August from the prior month, the second lowest reading of the year, according to figures compiled by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association. Lower trading volume indicates that liquidity has been reduced somewhat, but there could be brighter days ahead: the eight-month daily trading average is a bit higher at $200.9 billion and if that figure holds for the rest of the year, it will surpass last’s year’s daily average of $177.9 billion. Then again, $200.9 billion wouldn’t be...

Marketplace lending – otherwise known as peer-to-peer lending – is becoming more of a “thing” for institutional investors, hedge funds, venture capital firms, and even banks these days, but there are plenty of risks lurking in the bushes as well as other operational challenges, according to ratings service analysts. “While marketplace lending has enjoyed increasing growth and acceptance, Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services believes a measured and cautious approach is warranted to properly evaluate this segment, which exhibits unique and heightened risks,” S&P credit analysts Ildiko Szilank and Timothy Bartl wrote in a new report. Among the risks they identified is...

Are you ready for a government shutdown, one that could screw up the mortgage market? If not now, maybe later in the year...

Officials in the mortgage industry continue to obsess about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s pending integrated disclosure rule, but perhaps they should be paying closer attention to complying with the CFPB’s existing mortgage origination and servicing rules, a top bureau official suggested this week. Speaking at the Mortgage Bankers Association’s 2015 regulatory compliance conference in Washington, DC, Peggy Twohig, assistant director for supervision policy ...

Mortgage origination volume was down sharply in 2014, but not by as much as previously thought, according to an Inside Mortgage Finance analysis of Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data released this week by federal regulators. A total of $1.242 trillion of single-family purchase and refinance loans were originated during 2014, the HMDA data reveal. That was down 29.5 percent from the 2013 HMDA total, although purchase-mortgage lending was up slightly in both the government-insured and conventional markets. HMDA first-lien purchase and refi originations came...[Includes one data table]

Mark Zandi, chief economist with Moody’s, said the biggest impediment to opening up the FHA credit box is the issue of loan certification.