Servicing

ABN Amro Capital Markets, Boca Raton, Fla., has started offering master servicing in the market and was recently added to the Standard & Poor's Select Servicer List.As a master servicer, AMCAP monitors the sellers of mortgage loans who retain the servicing rights and obligations. AMCAP supports mortgage-backed securities deals by collecting payments from one or more of its underlying servicers and remitting that payment to a trustee for distribution to bondholders. Maria Fregosi, ABN Amro Mortgage Group's group vice president and capital markets manager, said master servicing will allow AAMG to diversify its origination sources beyond its traditional wholesale channel and facilitate bulk acquisitions that will give AAMG additional economies of scale to sell and securitize nonconforming mortgage products.

Green Courte Partners LLC, Lake Forest, Ill., has announced the closing of its first investment fund, Green Courte Real Estate Partners LLC, a $120 million private equity fund.The company said the fund will use "institutional levels" of leverage to invest $350 million in niche real estate sectors such as manufactured housing communities and parking assets. "We believe that focused niche strategies, which include partnership with strong local operators, will generate superior risk-adjusted long-term returns," said Randall K. Rowe, chairman of Green Courte Partners. The company can be found on the Web at http://www.greencourtepartners.com.

Residential Funding Corp., Minneapolis, has reported a record $50.1 billion issuance of mortgage-backed securities and mortgage-related asset-backed securities in 2003, up 45.1% from its issuance the year before.The total included: $14.3 billion in residential subprime securities; $8.7 billion of alternative-A securities; $6.8 billion in jumbo A-quality loan securities; $3.2 billion in securities backed by open-end lines and second-lien closed-end loans with high loan-to-value ratios; and approximately $16.5 billion in securities backed by high-LTV loans, program-variance mortgages, and others. GMAC-RFC said it was the largest issuer of mortgage-related ABS in 2003 and the second-largest U.S. mortgage conduit. The company can be found online at http://www.gmacrfc.com.

New Century Financial Corp., Irvine, Calif., has reported that its secondary marketing subsidiary has entered into six forward commitments for the sale of $6 billion in mortgage loans through June.The forward commitments were entered into by the subsidiary, NC Capital Corp., with two undisclosed institutional investors at "attractive" prices, New Century said. "Due to the demand for our product in the secondary market, we have elected to delay completing our first-quarter 2004 on-balance-sheet securitization of mortgage loans until April," said Kevin Cloyd, president of NC Capital. "We remain on track to sell 80% of our mortgage loans in the whole-loan market and securitize the remaining 20% on balance sheet in 2004." New Century can be found online at http://www.ncen.com.

Standard & Poor's has revised its criteria for structured finance transactions that include New Mexico loans governed by the Home Loan Protection Act, eliminating the requirement that issuers identify which loans constitute home improvement loans and manufactured housing loans.The move comes after Senate Bill 228, which repeals Section 7 of the act, was signed into law. By repealing Section 7, the bill removed the possibility of an additional layer of liability for purchasers and assignees of home loans based on the acts, errors, or omissions of a manufactured home seller or home improvement contractor, S&P said. The rating agency said it will continue to require issuers to identify home loans and high-cost home loans under the act. S&P can be found online at http://www.standardandpoors.com.

Two classes of Impac SAC mortgage pass-through certificates, series 1999-2, have been downgraded by Fitch Ratings.Class B-1 was downgraded from B-minus to CCC, and class B-2 was downgraded from C to D. In addition, Fitch upgraded one class in the deal and affirmed the ratings on three other classes. The downgrades were attributed to incurred losses, loss expectations, and high delinquencies relative to the applicable credit support. Class B-1 was also downgraded because recoveries were used to increase the class B-2 certificate balance to which realized losses had been allocated, the rating agency said. Fitch can be found online at http://www.fitchratings.com.

Prepayment rates for Fannie Mae mortgage-backed securities rose broadly in February, prompting the Bear Stearns Prepayment Commentary to caution that the increases may adversely affect MBS pricing for 5.5% and 6.0% coupons, where the speed-up was the greatest.Bear Stearns analysts Dale Westhoff and Bruce Kramer attributed the strong showing to three factors: excess capacity in the mortgage pipeline; a doubling of application volume since early January; and "attractive" hybrid mortgage alternatives. The excess capacity "has compressed the lag between interest rates and reported prepayments to just four weeks," the analysts said. Citing the shorter lag time and the larger number of business days in March, the analysts predicted that prepayments would rise again in the next report, by about 15%, but added a caveat. "It is important to note that despite the sharp increases in today's report, the numbers are still well below where they were the first time mortgage rates hit 5.65% in March 2003," they said. Bear Stearns can be found online at http://www.bearstearns.com.

Employment in the mortgage industry fell by 7,300 in January as lenders continued to trim their payrolls for the sixth consecutive month.The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported March 5 that jobs in the mortgage banking/broker sector fell from 439,800 in December to 432,500 in January. Since last July, lenders have cut 25,100 full-time employees. But the layoffs and job cuts may be ending soon, since home sales remain strong and refinancing activity is increasing. The February employment report indicates that job creation in the economy continues to be anemic, and the yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to its lowest level since July. This should give homeowners another chance to refinance at historically low mortgage rates. (The February employment report released on Friday provided mortgage sector employment data for January only. BLS instituted this one-month lag in the mortgage data when it revamped its jobs report in May.)

GMAC Mortgage has signed two new subservicing clients, Redwood Trust and MortgageIT.Tony Renzi, GMAC Mortgage's executive vice president and head of national loan administration, said the arrangements with the new clients are unique. "Not only do we offer services for a variety of mortgage loan products and asset classes, we also can customize our servicing options to meet a client's specific business objectives," Mr. Renzi said. Redwood Trust, based in Mill Valley, Calif., is a real estate investment trust that participates mainly in jumbo single-family residential loans, commercial mortgage loans, and mortgage-backed securities. GMAC will service the company's jumbo adjustable-rate mortgage loans. For the New York-based MortgageIT, GMAC will service new subprime offerings.

Standard and Poor's Ratings Services has announced that it will continue to rate structured transactions containing loans originated by national banks governed by anti-predatory-lending laws in 11 states and in Oakland, Calif., because the lenders would not be subject to assignee liability.The 11 states are: Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and South Carolina. The rating agency said it was unable to make the same determination about assignee liability for loans originated by national banks subject to predatory-lending laws in Arkansas and Los Angeles. The decision followed a review of a final rule issued by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency that amends criteria regarding the OCC's pre-emption authority over national banks and their operating subsidiaries. S&P can be found online at http://www.standardandpoors.com.