Secondary

Freddie purchased $50.3 billion in participation certificates during the first six months of 2013, compared to $15.6 billion in the same period in 2012.

Goldman Sachs, Jefferies and Citigroup have lined up a $1.2 billion conduit CMBS deal that is backed by 84 commercial mortgage loans secured by 132 properties.

Banc of California reported better-than-expected quarterly earnings that reflected recent acquisitions.

Passport Capital sold its entire portfolio of mortgage debt backed by the U.S. government in the second quarter.

The latest round of 30-year conventional mortgage-backed securities prepayment speeds were 9% slower than the previous month.

President Obama ended his administration's self-imposed blackout regarding housing finance reform on Tuesday, finally endorsing a specific approach after effectively punting on the issue more than two years ago.

Freddie Mac posted earnings of $5 billion in the second quarter, up from $4.6 billion in the first quarter.

Given the spike in interest rates over the past couple of months, even a small increase in application volume of 0.2% on a seasonally adjusted basis for the week ended Aug. 2 could be considered as good news.

Ginnie Mae has started providing loan-level data on newly issued single-family MBS and soon investors will be able to receive monthly updates on the performance of the underlying loans.

It sounds like people are optimistic about Freddie Mac’s recent risk-sharing transaction even though they have some questions about them.