Secondary

Situs agreed Friday to buy mortgage servicing rights valuation and brokerage firm MountainView Financial Solutions in a deal set to close this month.

MountainView is brokering a nonrecourse $3.5 billion package of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage servicing rights on behalf of an unnamed seller.

A group of reinsurers has committed to provide up to $650 million of coverage for credit risk on some $21 billion of 30-year, fixed-rate loans that the government-sponsored agency will acquire over the next two years.

Genworth Financial's acquisition by a Chinese insurance company, which has already been delayed several times, might be in peril following the failure of another cross-border merger to gain approval.

The Trepp CMBS Delinquency Rate ended the year at 4.89%, a decrease of 29 basis points from the November level. That’s the largest monthly drop since January 2016.

Some commercial buildings that are not required to obtain earthquake insurance may still be susceptible to significant structural damage that could put the borrowers at risk of default, according to Kroll Bond Rating Agency.

Fannie Mae's serious delinquency rate climbed to a high not seen since March 2017, but remained lower than it was 12 months prior.

A regulatory relief package is likely to come out of the Senate in the new year, and lawmakers could follow it up with a housing finance reform push. But the midterm elections could cause some reform initiatives to grind to a halt.

The GSEs are on their way to paying back the money they owed the government under the original bailout deal made at the height of the financial crisis, making 2018 an opportune time for an overhaul of the housing finance market.

Speculators who bet on declines in commercial mortgage bond indexes as a way to profit from the expected demise of regional shopping malls may still be waiting for a big payout, according to Trepp.