Servicing

Five classes of Structured Asset Securities Corp. mortgage pass-through certificates have been downgraded by Fitch Ratings. The downgrades were as follows: class B3 of series 2001-2, from CCC/DR2 to CC/DR3; class B3 of series 2001-9, from CCC/DR2 to CC/DR3; class B5 of series 2001-16H, from CCC/DR2 to CC/DR3; class B5 of series 2002-5A, from BB to B; and class B5 of series 2002-AL1, from B to CCC/DR3. Fitch also placed two classes on Rating Watch Negative and affirmed the ratings on 83 classes from 27 SASCO transactions. The collateral consists of fixed- and adjustable-rate prime and alternative-A mortgages.

Seven classes of notes issued by Oxford Street Finance Ltd., a collateralized debt obligation that consists partly of subprime mortgage-backed securities, have been downgraded and placed on Rating Watch Negative by Fitch Ratings. The downgrades were as follows: class B, from AA-plus to A; class C, from AA to BBB; class D, from AA-minus to BB; class E, from A to CCC; class F, from A-minus to CC; class G, from BBB to CC; and class H, from BB-plus to CC. Classes A1 and A2 were also placed on Rating Watch Negative. The negative rating actions were attributed primarily to "the negative credit rating migration within the [asset-backed securities] portion of the underlying collateral." The ABS exposure consists of subprime residential MBS from 2005 to 2007. The synthetic CDO references a 2.0 billion euro diversified portfolio of primarily investment-grade corporate bonds in addition to the ABS, Fitch said.

Nine classes from four issues of Bear Stearns mortgage pass-through certificates have been downgraded by Fitch Ratings. Fitch also placed three classes on Rating Watch Negative and affirmed the ratings on 18 other classes from five Bear Stearns transactions. The rating agency can be found on the Web at http://www.fitchratings.com.

First American eAppraiseIT, Poway, Calif., has announced the introduction of a valuation tool that it says offers quick, low-cost, accurate values for credit decisions, loss mitigation, portfolio analysis, and quality assurance. The standard Data Assist report verifies a property's legal address and ownership and includes three closed-sale comparables from the subject property's market area, the company said. Data Assist with Listings offers the same information, plus three current listings that are similar to the subject property. "Many lenders are now looking for more alternatives [to automated valuation models]," said Michael Fosser, senior vice president of business development for eAppraiseIT. "Data Assist can provide a high level of confidence without adding significant cost or delay to these transactions." The company can be found online at http://www.eappraiseit.com.

Ginnie Mae has announced that Financial Freedom, a leading reverse mortgage lender and a subsidiary of IndyMac Bank FSB, has joined Ginnie Mae's Home Equity Conversion Mortgage Mortgage-Backed Securities program as an issuer. The HMBS program provides the only full-faith-and-credit vehicle and the only standardized structure for the securitization of Federal Housing Administration-insured reverse mortgages, according to Ginnie Mae. The HMBS, an accrual coupon pass-through bond, "simplifies the current structure of reverse mortgage securitizations and maximizes value for reverse mortgage lenders and borrowers," Ginnie said. The program allows issuers to securitize initial and subsequent loan draws, mortgage insurance premiums, and servicing and guarantee fees and to receive market pricing on the entire loan amount. Ginnie Mae, a government-owned corporation within the Department of Housing and Urban Development, can be found online at http://www.ginniemae.gov.

PMI Mortgage Insurance Co., Walnut Creek, Calif., has announced the formation of a homeownership preservation team led by John Jelavich, PMI's newly appointed vice president of homeownership preservation initiatives. PMI said it plans to expand its national accounts servicing team, whose primary responsibility will be to assist lenders in developing ways to help borrowers avoid foreclosure. "We're confident that providing additional manpower and resources to aid our customers will ultimately help people who have the ability to make a reasonable mortgage payment preserve their home," said Gene Campion, PMI's senior vice president of servicing operations, loss mitigation, and claims. PMI Mortgage can be found online at http://www.pmi-us.com.

Freddie Mac's single-family delinquency rate on its total portfolio of owned or guaranteed loans rose to 71 basis points in January, up from 65 bps in December and from 43 bps a year earlier. However, Freddie Mac also noted in its monthly business summary that the percentage of loans that were 60 or more days past due declined to 1 bp. That was down from 2 bps in December and 6 bps one year earlier. Freddie Mac said its total portfolio of owned or guaranteed loans increased at an annualized rate of 8.4% in February. The company purchased $47.7 billion of home loans in February, up slightly from the volume recorded in February 2007. The government-sponsored enterprise can be found on the Web at http://www.freddiemac.com.

Hedge funds and Wall Street may see up to $460 billion in credit losses before the current crisis ends, according to new Wall Street research. The figure, cited by Goldman Sachs on March 25, was noted widely in the market, according to multiple reports. "Clearly, this analysis is bearish for the financial sector," said David Ader, U.S. government bond strategist at RBS Greenwich Capital.

Moody's Investors Service has applied its "servicer quality national scale ratings" (tailored for primary servicers in local markets) to Russian servicers for the first time. Moody's rolled out servicer quality ratings in 2001 and has been offering them in parts of the "Europe, Middle East and Africa" region since 2003, but SQ NSRs are not comparable to other SQ ratings, according to Carine Kumps-Feniou, a Moody's assistant vice president-analyst. The SQ NSRs "reflect the financial stability of the servicer based on a national scale credit rating instead of a global scale credit rating" and are designed to "allow many market participants to further benchmark national servicers against each other domestically," Moody's said. The SQ NSRs apply to servicers of both residential mortgage-backed securities and asset-backed securities deals. The rating agency can be found online at http://www.moodys.com.

General Growth Properties Inc., a Chicago-based real estate investment trust, has priced a public offering of approximately 22.83 million shares of common stock at $36 per share. GGP said the offering includes 2.445 million shares being sold to MB Capital Partners III, an affiliate of Matthew Bucksbaum, GGP's chairman emeritus, and John Bucksbaum, its chairman and chief executive officer. The approximately $821.9 million of net proceeds will be used to repay GGP's revolving credit facility and other debt and for general corporate purposes, the company said. The REIT can be found online at http://www.ggp.com.