Market Studies

Performance on vintage prime residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) continues to degrade, Fitch Ratings revealed in a report. The ratings agency announced a downgrade on 6 percent of its rated prime RMBS classes, many of which fall into the pre-2005 category. Fitch attributed the downgrade to increased delinquency rates in certain pools.

IHS Global Insight took a closer look at the ""Show Me State"" as part of its ongoing analysis of 12 swing states.

The housing crises seems to have led Americans to take a less critical view of strategic default. According to a recent survey that polled 1,026 U.S. adults, 32 percent stated they believe homeowners should be able to strategically default without facing consequences. The online survey was conducted by JZ Analytics on behalf of ID Analytics.

Completed foreclosures continued their progressive decline, and foreclosure inventory fell to its lowest level since April 2010, CoreLogic reported Thursday. In August 2012, 57,000 homes were lost to foreclosure, down from 58,000 in July and 75,000 a year ago. The yearly decrease represents a 24 percent decline. While the national numbers are down, certain states are still seeing a high number of foreclosures, with five states accounting for 48.1 percent of all completed foreclosures.

When the September employment situation report is released Friday, one number will loom large, and it won't be the number of new payroll jobs, expected by economists surveyed by Bloomberg to be about 113,000, and it won't be the unemployment rate, expected to be 8.1 percent. Instead, it will be 386,000, which is the number of jobs added to the nation's payrolls, not by employers, but by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in its annual ""benchmarking"" of payroll data.

Commercial mortgage-backed security (CMBS) delinquencies have posted substantial declines over the past two months, according to Trepp. After falling 21 basis points in August, delinquencies decreased another 14 basis points in September, bringing the delinquency rate below 10 percent, just barely. The CMBS delinquency rate is now 9.99 percent, according to Trepp, and the agency predicts the rate should continue to decline over the next few months.

Mortgage applications saw increased activity in the last week of September, the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) reported. Mortgage application volume increased 16.6 percent in the week ending September 28, according to MBA's Mortgage Composite Index. Meanwhile, the Refinance Index increased 20 percent from a week before to its highest recorded level since April 2009.

In August, lenders in Massachusetts completed the least number of foreclosures since February 2011, according to a report from The Warren Group.Lenders in August completed 566 foreclosures, marking a 40 percent decease from August 2011, when there were 947 completed foreclosures.

Foreclosure inventory continues to decline but remains more than eight times what it was in the decade prior to the housing crisis, according to the latest report from Lender Processing Services (LPS). Noncurrent loans make up 10.9 percent of all loans as of August, demonstrating a year-over-year change of -7.6 percent, according to LPS. As of August, the delinquency rate stands at 6.9 percent, and the foreclosure rate is 4.0 percent. LPS also noted prepayment activity was up ""significantly"" in August, nearing levels last reported in 2005.

New York attorney general and co-chair of RMBS Working Group Eric T. Schneiderman announced a lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase Bank, JPMorgan Securities, LLC (formerly known as Bear Stearns & Co.), and EMC Mortgage LLC (formerly EMC Mortgage Corporation). Schneiderman's complaint alleges that Bear Stearns led investors to believe that the quality of loans in its mortgage-backed securities had been carefully evaluated and would be monitored. The complaint further alleges that as a result of Bear Stearns' and the other defendants' negligence, investors suffered cumulative losses of approximately $22.5 billion.