The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision recently proposed replacing credit ratings with loan-characteristic metrics for determining capital requirements on bank holdings of residential MBS and commercial MBS. Federal regulators in the U.S. note that the proposal is preliminary and any changes to U.S. capital requirements will go through a notice and comment process separate from the BCBS’ activity. The current standardized approach established by Basel for determining capital requirement riskweights prescribes the use of external credit ratings for residential MBS and commercial MBS, among other holdings by banks subject to capital requirements. “While acknowledging that credit rating agencies play an important role in financial markets and that external credit assessments provide valuable information that may assist in the analysis of credit risk exposures, the hard-wiring of external credit assessments into standards, laws and regulations may often lead...
Two real estate investment trusts that have focused their efforts on residential MBS recently announced plans to enter the commercial MBS market. The moves come as issuance of residential MBS has been subdued since the financial crisis while issuance of commercial MBS activity has been soaring in recent years. PennyMac Financial Services announced this month that it formed PennyMac Commercial Real Estate Finance. The business will focus on loans that finance multifamily and other commercial real estate with a typical value of under $10 million. PennyMac said it plans for its REIT, PennyMac Mortgage Investment Trust, to acquire and securitize the commercial mortgages. “The opportunity in this market is...
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority will soon propose increasing transparency on trading of certain MBS, but officials say it won’t the market. Late last week, the FINRA board of governors authorized issuance of a regulatory notice soliciting comment on a proposal to amend rules for Trade Reporting and Compliance Engine, or TRACE. The proposal would provide for public dissemination of transaction information in real time for deals valued under $1 million, and in aggregate weekly and monthly reports for transactions valued at $1 million or more. FINRA Chairman and CEO Rick Ketchum said...
By some measurements, the market for commercial MBS backed by single-family rental units has been successful, drawing investors from Wall Street, the hedge fund community and overseas. But that success, to some degree, is beginning to worry the Treasury Department’s Office of Financial Research. Moreover, the OFR also is expressing anxieties about mortgage real estate investment trusts and repurchase agreements. As of September 2014, roughly $5 billion of single-family rental MBS had been issued...
Fannie, Freddie Conforming Loan Limits Mostly Unchanged for 2015. The Federal Housing Finance Agency this week said that conforming loan limits for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2015 would remain at current levels in most markets. For much of the country, the conforming loan limit for one-unit properties will remain at $417,000. The loan limits are established under the terms of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 and are calculated each year.
Top mortgage finance professionals and government officials gathered in New York City last week to discuss the prospects for the non-agency MBS market, and their assessments were all over the board, a sign of the uncertainty many participants have about trying to resuscitate a stagnant sector. “It’s been seven years since the financial crisis, and certainly a lot of things have changed,” said Rui Pereira, managing director at Fitch Ratings, during a panel at the non-agency MBS reform symposium sponsored by the Structured Finance Industry Group and Information Management Network. He then cited...
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