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The FDIC announced a nearly $14 billion deal to sell IndyMac Federal Bank to a private-equity consortium led by the head of Dune Capital Management.
As expected, John Courson has taken over as the president and chief executive of the MBA as of Jan. 1.
The Treasury Department expects to use asset guarantees 'sparingly,' it said in a report to Congress.
The widely followed Case-Shiller home price index has exaggerated home price declines for most homeowners.
Fannie Mae bought just $29.65 billion in mortgages from its seller/servicers in November, its worst purchase month of the year.
The European securitization market looks set to keep on the same track it traveled throughout 2008. Government-sponsored programs are at the forefront of primary activity going into 2009. Until the market overhang dissipates and pricing issues are addressed, it's unlikely that the primary market will see any real activity, market sources said. Throughout the year, the central banks have made moves to accept a wider range of products as collateral to fund banks' balance sheets holdings.
It is safe to say that securitization professionals will not miss 2008, and market participants fear that 2009 does not look much brighter. Activity in the RMBS sector remains at a lull, with mounting economic pressures yielding a continuingly bleak housing market.
Mortgage-backed volume in the last two weeks of December averaged less than 70% of the 30-day average. Heading into the Christmas holidays, mortgages widened substantially on nearly $4 billion in originator selling - consisting of about 75% 4.5s and 25% 4s. From Christmas Eve through midday Monday last week, mortgages tightened as a result of buying from real and fast money investors, who took advantage of the widening. The buying was also caused by a stable Treasury market and light supply.
As a great songwriter once wrote, 'the times they are a-changin'...' For the first time since its inception in the early 1990's, the United States CMBS market and CMBS servicer capabilities are being tested by the very economic stress that was the impetus for the creation of the CMBS market. The servicing of distressed real estate loans is presenting many problems for borrowers as their loans become troubled due to the continued downward spiral of the market. One of the major challenges for borrowers are the various restrictions on CMBS loans that severely limit the flexibility of loan servicers (who take the place of lenders in the CMBS framework) when working out distressed loans. This limited flexibility means that many loans that may have been worked out in the past (e.g., properties that are fundamentally sound but are facing short-term economic distress resulting from excessive vacancy or unexpected one-time expense) cannot be worked out due to the fact the loan has been securitized.
In the original version of the home-valuation standards that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac agreed to adopt under a March deal with New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, lenders faced sweeping change, including a requirement that they divest themselves of appraisal-management subsidiaries. As revised, the effective mandate will be quite different.
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