Caution, Slippery Slope Ahead: The biggest story of this week broke today, regarding the Treasury Department’s efforts to establish a widespread bailout of troubled subprime borrowers — an effort that is allegedly going to be inked before the end of this year. Details are scarce at this point, but one thing is clear: investors have [...]

Numerous media reports this morning suggest the Federal government is nearing an agreement with a number of the nation’s largest banks to freeze ARM resets for a certain chunk of borrowers. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that the plan being devised is part of the HOPE NOW Alliance and a change in strategy by Treasury [...]

While the MBA reported a sharp drop in refi activity earlier this week and said that rates on one year ARMs have risen in step with Libor, most other mortgage rates are continuing to decrease, according to a report released yesterday. Freddie Mac said in its weekly mortgage rate survey that mortgage rates have reached their [...]

Foreclosure activity nationwide kept increasing during October, rising 2 percent from September to push foreclosures to levels nearly double one year earlier. According to a monthly report released yesterday by foreclosure data provider RealtyTrac, 224,451 foreclosure filings — default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions — were reported during the month. “Overall foreclosure activity continues [...]

Fannie Mae said Friday morning that its mortgage investment portfolio grew at a 17.3 percent annual rate in October, largely the result of a $7.1 billion purchase of a Lehman Brothers credit facility. The investment portfolio reached $732.3 billion, the GSE reported, which was within the portfolio cap mandated by the Office of Federal Housing [...]

(November 30, 2007) — Fannie Mae will redeem principal amounts on four securities, CUSIP numbers: 3136F8HC2, 3136F8AB1, 3136F8AG0, 31359M2N2.

Yesterday, the Commerce Department released its New Residential Sales report, which seemed to show a surprising gain in new home sales — but only after a surprisingly large downward revision to previous sales numbers. From the report: Sales of new one-family houses in October 2007 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 728,000, according to estimates [...]

The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight’s HPI numbers for the third quarter are out today, and registered a quarterly decline for the first time in thirteen years, with the aggregate index dropping 0.4 percent versus the second quarter of 2007. The HPI purchase-only index dropped 0.3 percent on a seasonally-adjusted basis, OFHEO said. Year [...]

The FDIC’s Quarterly Banking Survey for the third quarter, released today, covers quite a bit of ground on the mortgage markets; but perhaps the most telling is a section in the report that says loss coverage ratios are the thinnest they’ve been in nearly 15 years — in spite of nearly historic increases in loss [...]

Fitch Ratings today issued a wide-ranging press statement that offered some analysis of the problems plaguing the RBMS and mortgage-related derivatives market, and dropped some bombshells on changing the ratings process. First, Fitch noted that fraud is a bigger problem among recent subprime vintages than previously thought: … the extraordinarily high level of defaults encountered by the [...]