A look at the stories across HousingWire’s desk during the weekend…with more coverage to come on bigger issues:

The Boston Federal Reserve Bank president Eric Rosengren started off the weekend warning the mortgage finance industry that mortgage rates might grow by as much as 75bps in spring 2010. A Reuters article has the scoop.

"You maybe would have thought you would have seen rates move up more quickly than they have, but nonetheless it's a concern," he told the media.

The Washington State Department of Financial Institutions shuttered Horizon Bank, naming the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) receiver. Washington Federal Savings and Loan Association agreed to assume all $1.1bn of deposits and "essentially all" the $1.3bn of total assets, according to the FDIC, which entered a loss-share transaction with Washington Federal Savings and Loan on approximately $1bn of the failed bank's assets. The first bank failure of the new year, Horizon Bank is expected to cost the FDIC's deposit insurance fund $539.1m.

Market commentary from Barclays Capital (BarCap) on Friday notes a recent trend of increased interest from non-traditional investors in interest-only (IO) securities.

IOs are agency collateralized mortgage obligations (CMOs) that are split off from agency pass-throughs. The other CMO created in the process is the principal-only (PO) security.

The price and yield of IOs tend to increase as interest rates rise, causing prepayments to slow. The price of IOs rising with higher rates marks a stark opposite of the behavior of many fixed-income securities. This makes IOs effective particularly for hedging portfolio risk, BarCap researchers note.

Chinese regulators this weekend issued a notice that aims to crack down on real estate lending. The Embassy of the People's Republic of China in Australia has a comprehensive bulletin on the notice and the changes it will bring:

"The lengthy notice came after house prices in 70 large and medium-sized Chinese cities rose 5.7% year-on-year in November 2009, continuing an escalation which has triggered fresh concerns over property speculation and property bubble in the country," the bulletin reads.

First-time home buyers will be subject to the same rules as before, but now borrowers seeking to buy second homes may soon have to provide at least 40% of the house's value in the down payment. The notice indicates mortgage rates should be decided based on loan risks.

Additionally, financial institutions should not grant loans to developers that don't meet minimum capital requirements for jump-starting a new commercial property.

The Chicago office of commercial real estate service provider Holliday Fenoglio Fowler (HFF) secured a $156m refinancing of an eight-property, 2,306-unit multi-housing portfolio spread across Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia, according to a press statement late last week.

The 10-year 5.4% fixed-rate loan was securitized through Freddie Mac's ($0.00 0%) Capital Markets Execution (CME) program. The loans will be serviced by HFF.

“In addition to the exceedingly attractive loan terms delivered to our borrowers, this closing was monumental as it represented the very first crossed-pool funding for Freddie Mac’s CME program,” said Matthew Schoenfeldt, HFF director.

Write to Diana Golobay.

The author holds no relevant investment positions.