Secondary

KossREsource.com, an online information portal for the commercial real estate industry, has gone live. Among the features of the site is an extensive database of debt and equity financing alternatives which is user driven.

Spanish and Portuguese banks are leading European lenders in buying back their own mortgage-backed securities at distressed prices to bolster capital and stockpile eligible collateral for European Central Bank loans.

The TBA market is widely viewed as an essential element of a functioning mortgage market, serving as both the ultimate source of liquidity and a crucial pricing benchmark for housing finance.

Three industry executives attending the Mortgage Bankers Association’s National Secondary Market Conference in New York this year weighed in recently on the government and private secondary mortgage markets. And in the excerpt that follows, they discuss how the transition away from the former toward the latter might someday take place.

An American Securitization Forum report suggests market participants agree combining Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac mortgage-backed securities could eliminate pricing discrepancies between the two types of agency MBS.

Attorney Robert Maddox, who represents Ally Financial, calls the landmark foreclosure settlement earlier this year "a Trojan horse for the government to fix perceived problems in mortgage servicing" but others dispute the view that the punishment was too severe.

Fannie Mae’s mortgage purchases rebounded 30% in May after acquisitions plummeted 45% in April, while Freddie Mac released numbers showing a similar rebound in mortgage purchases for May.

In an effort to elevate tourism as an economic tool, Virginia has named the first project to benefit from its new tourism-related financing program.

The Mortgage Bankers Association reported that the average profit per loan originated in the first quarter was $1,654, up from $1,093 in the fourth quarter.

The members of the Mortgage Insurance Cos. of America wrote $8.7 billion in primary new insurance during May, compared with $7.1 billion in April and $3.9 billion for May 2011.