Secondary Market

MERSCORP, Inc., which operates the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS) database, has appointed mortgage industry veteran Bill Beckmann as president and CEO. Beckmann was formerly chairman and CEO of CitiMortgage, Inc. He replaces R.K. Arnold, who resigned as MERS' president and CEO in January.

The research firm and ratings agency DBRS says it has learned from various servicers that although Congress never authorized bankruptcy judges to modify mortgages on primary residences, these ""cram-downs,"" as they have been termed, are currently being performed in some courts. The agency's analysts say the amount of the cram-down varies by state, property value, and borrower situation but usually includes a reduction in the principal amount of the loan to fair market value.

The research firm Delta Associates says distress in the commercial sector is maintaining its plateau. The company's analysts report that despite a $5 billion increase in the volume of commercial properties in foreclosure and lender REO over the last two months, the level of distress has remained in the $175 billion to $190 billion range since the spring of last year. They warn that the months ahead, though, could test the staying power of the stabilization seen thus far.

Fannie Mae has released new details on its book of business, which shows the share of mortgages it owns or guarantees that's past due by three months or longer has been on a steady decline for a year now. The nation's largest mortgage company reported that its seriously delinquent rate on single-family mortgage loans slipped to 4.44 percent in February of this year. That's down just 1 basis point from 4.45 percent in January, but it marks the 12th straight month that the rate has decreased.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are issuing new guidelines to servicers in order to align their procedures for handling past-due mortgages. The objective is to ensure consistent servicing requirements for loans handled on behalf of the GSEs across four key areas: borrower contact, delinquency management practices, loan modifications, and foreclosure timelines. The new approach provides monetary incentives for servicers that perform well and imposes fines on those that do not.

The Federal Reserve will end its second bond-buying spree - this time to the tune of $600 billion - by the end of the second quarter as planned. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke says the sunset of the central bank's targeted initiative for pumping money into the economy is ""unlikely to have a significant effect"" on mortgage rates. That was Bernanke's response during the hour-long press conference held Wednesday after the Fed's two-day policy meeting - the first press briefing held by a U.S. central bank commander in the institution's 96-year history.

The Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston has filed a complaint with the Massachusetts Superior Court to rescind investments it made in private-label mortgage-backed securities (MBS) issued by 115 securitization trusts totaling $5.8 billion. The suit alleges that the securities dealers, underwriters, issuers, and credit ratings agencies involved in the transactions made untrue or misleading statements regarding the quality of the underlying loans and the creditworthiness of the borrowers.

CoreLogic recently released Vector Securities, a platform to enable transparent and dynamic loan-level analysis of non-agency residential mortgage backed securities (RMBS). The company says the transparency at both the deal- and loan-level provided by the new technology is key to enabling a new era of confident securitizations and reestablishing the RMBS market as private liquidity returns.

North Dakota is the 27th state to restrict home resale fees, also known as ""private transfer fees."" Governor Jack Dalrymple recently signed bill SB 2149 to ban them. Private transfer fees require that a private third party receive a percentage of the final sale price of a home every time the property is sold, typically for 99 years.

The percentage of home loans going unpaid is steadily declining for the nation's second largest mortgage company. Freddie Mac reported Tuesday that its single-family seriously delinquent rate decreased to 3.63 percent in March. That's down 15 basis points from 3.78 percent in February, and the fourth consecutive month that the rate has headed south. With only a few intermittent blips upward over the last year, Freddie has recorded a drop in its seriously delinquent rate in nine of the past 12 months.