Secondary markets

Following a series of regulatory and legal challenges to force-placed insurance, the Securities and Exchange Commission asked Assurant, the leading specialty insurance carrier, to quantify the potential financial impact.

Mark Adelson, a veteran mortgage-backed securities researcher and former chief credit officer at Standard & Poor’s, has left his research post at S&P

Any quarter now Fannie Mae will crank up its nonperforming loan auction machine, giving bottom fishers across America a chance to bid on billions of dollars in nonperforming mortgages guaranteed by Uncle Sam.

The Mortgage Industry Advisory Corp. is set to auction off $59.2 million of subprime residential mortgages—much of it performing.

Mortgage bankers issued $32 billion of Ginnie Mae mortgage-backed securities in July down almost 8% from June. Still, the market remains strong.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating the government-owned Residential Capital Corp. for possible misconduct in its loan origination and underwriting practices.

Market interest in launching REO-to-rental securitizations has increased over the past several months, driven partly by the sizable inventory of real estate owned properties.

Bank of Oklahoma hired former Fannie Mae executive Elliot Salzman as vice president in charge of correspondent lending.

Hudson City Bancorp could no longer defy the odds of interest rate risk, agreeing Monday to sell itself to M&T Bank for $3.7 billion.

Buried in the fine print of the Treasury Department’s revised bailout deal with the government-sponsored enterprises is a clause that allows Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to sell up to $250 million of assets in one fell swoop without prior approval from the agency.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York has finished selling the mortgage-related Maiden Lane III assets from its bailout of American International Group, generating a net gain of about $6.6 billion

Almost 30% of all refinances are shorter amortization products, up from just 5% in 2007.

Nationstar Mortgage Holdings said two of its subsidiaries are soliciting consents to amend a bond indenture from 2010 on 10.875% senior notes due 2015.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York announced the sale of the rest of the securities in the Maiden Lane III portfolio.

Not since July 2007, before the subprime mortgage market collapsed and credit markets froze, have investors accepted relative yields as low as they are now for debt of the nation’s biggest homebuilders.

Freddie Mac reported that it purchased $32.5 billion in loans from mortgage lenders in July, down from $44.1 billion in June.

MountainView Capital Holdings this week inked a deal to buy Clayton IPS, the independent pricing service division of Clayton Holdings.

June set a record for HARP 2.0 volume at 126,000 loans, including 53,750 mortgages with loan-to-value ratios over 125%.

Gragg Advertising is working on a marketing campaign for the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage.

Buyers of non-owner occupied properties need financing too.