Secondary Market

Fannie Mae has released the names of its top loan originators of multifamily debt financing for 2009. Pittsburgh-based PNC Financial Services sat at the top of the list. The GSE works with its lender partners to provide debt solutions for all segments of the multifamily market. The GSE invested $19.8 billion in multifamily housing last year.

The Ohio Housing Finance Agency (OHFA) announced Friday that it recently issued $5.6 million of tax-exempt bonds on behalf of New Hampshire House Associates, LLC. The proceeds of these bonds will be used to finance the acquisition and rehabilitation of a multifamily residential rental facility in Warren, Ohio. This project is OHFA's first multifamily transaction under the Treasury/government-sponsored enterprise HFA initiative, which was announced October 19, 2009.

Overdue loans in pools of commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) continue to mount. Although the rate of increase slowed from March's breakneck pace, the research firm Trepp LLC reported Monday that the percentage of CMBS loans 30 or more days delinquent, in foreclosure, or classified as REO jumped 41 basis points last month, putting the overall delinquency rate at 8.02 percent. Fitch Ratings says the default rate for its CMBS-rated universe is even higher, hitting 8.15 percent at the end of Q1 2010.

As for commercial real estate, now is the time to invest. But according to a report from the CCIM Institute and the Real Estate Research Corporation, various risks are hindering commercial real estate investors from doing so. Their report says 2010 is ""a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity"" to snag key long-term investments, but market factors such as diminished demand for commercial space due to high unemployment and declining rents are holding some investors back.

Prudential Mortgage Capital Company, a commercial and multifamily mortgage finance business based in Newark, New Jersey, announced Friday that it has launched the Agency Gateway program, a new short term loan program for multifamily property owners seeking to refinance or acquire properties that do not currently qualify for a Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac permanent loan.

Only 10 percent of the $41 billion of distressed commercial real estate from a year ago has been resolved and is no longer held by the lender, according to new data from the research firm Real Capital Analytics. The company's analysis shows that securities trusts and domestic lenders have settled a comparably small portion of their distress from last year. Of those loans resolved, commercial mortgage-backed securities holders are more likely to have restructured the mortgages, while domestic banks are more likely to have foreclosed.

In an announcement Friday, Fannie Mae said it is changing the eligibility criteria for purchasing and securitizing adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) products. For ARMs with an initial period of five years or less, Fannie Mae will require that borrowers be qualified at the greater of the note rate plus 2 percent or the fully indexed rate (index plus margin). The company said it created these new standards to protect homeowners from potentially dramatic payment increases and to help ensure that borrowers who hold these types of mortgages can sustain them beyond the initial interest rate period

The civil charges brought against investment bank Goldman Sachs for allegedly defrauding mortgage investors could turn criminal. Federal prosecutors with the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan are reportedly investigating the Wall Street fixture for possible criminal misconduct in dealings involving an investment vehicle and transactions related to subprime residential mortgages. Goldman Sachs and its executives continue to deny any wrongdoing.

Wells Fargo Securities announced Thursday that it has expanded its residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) platform to provide a full suite of advisory, structuring, research, distribution, and trading services to its residential origination and investing clients and to Wells Fargo Home Mortgage (WFHM).

The legal wranglings continue for what was once the nation's premier subprime mortgage lender, Countrywide Financial Corp. The company was hit with another lawsuit Wednesday, this time from United Western Bank. The bank is suing Countrywide for losses it incurred on six private-label mortgage-backed securities (MBS) purchased from the subprime lender. Bank of America, UBS Securities, and certain officers of Countrywide are also named as defendants.