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Inside MBS & ABS

February 20, 2009

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Obama Administration Outlines Ambitious Refi Project, Mass Modification Program

The Obama administration’s plan to shore up the mortgage market announced this week could spark a massive refinance wave in the agency MBS market and begin to make a dent in the festering foreclosure problem through mass loan modifications. A major component of the Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan calls for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to begin refinancing mortgages at... Read More

Senate Bill Allows Servicers to Do More Aggressive Loan Modifications Without Loss of REMIC Status

The Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs is considering legislation that would help unlock mortgage securitization trusts to more aggressive foreclosure prevention efforts. The Real Estate Mortgage Investment Conduit Improvement Act of 2009, S. 376, would modify current REMIC qualification rules to ensure that modifications or dispositions done under the Troubled... Read More

Servicers and Investors Search for Middle Ground In Loan Mod Battle, Ask for Standardization

The mortgage market is beset by a fragmented tug-of-war among mortgage servicers, MBS investors and issuers over the foreclosure crisis, according to experts speaking at the American Securitization Forum annual conference in Las Vegas last week. There was little agreement about the best approach to mitigating foreclosure and keeping borrowers in their homes, but many... Read More

Trustee Group Says MBS Servicers Should Consider Loan Modification

An industry group representing MBS trustees offered support for the idea that mortgage servicers should consider loan modification as a loss mitigation strategy but stopped short of endorsing modification as a blanket solution to the foreclosure problem. In a letter to the Federal Housing Finance Agency written on behalf of its members that are corporate trustees, the American... Read More

Lawsuits Sprouting From All Corners of MBS Business Following Market Collapse

While the public has a front row seat at the battles over foreclosures, mortgage legislation and the government-sponsored enterprises, the securitization industry is increasingly facing a behind-the-scenes war of its own, said lawyers at the American Securitization Forum’s 2009 conference in Las Vegas last week. “Everybody is suing everybody,” said Talcott Franklin, a... Read More

Government MBS Support Continues To Grow, Bernanke Defends Fed Moves

The federal government has pumped more than $276 billion into the residential mortgage market over the past few months, according to a new analysis by Inside MBS & ABS. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York this week added some $19.87 billion of agency MBS to its holdings. That brought the bank’s total agency MBS acquisitions since the beginning of the year to... [Includes one graph] Read More

Pace of Rating Downgrades Quickens As Services Assess Declining Market

Credit rating companies were much busier downgrading existing MBS and ABS and scrambling to restructure their processes last year than they were rating new transactions. The volume of rated non-agency MBS fell from $707.01 billion in 2007 to just $58.42 billion last year, a 92 percent decline. Many of last year’s deals were re-securitizations and... [Includes two charts] Read More

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