The market for jumbo mortgage bonds not backed by Fannie/Freddie still slim. But here’s a new sign of life.

Bank risk retention rules mired in bureaucracy.

[Latest in our 'Future of Mortgages' series] A few years ago, REITs that bought and sold residential mortgage securities were very much off the radar screen. But times change and according to DealLogic, of the nine new REITs with IPOs planned this year, seven will invest in mortgage backed securities (often referred to on this [...]

There are 7 days left for public comment on the Qualified Residential Mortgage (QRM) proposals for how lenders must keep skin in the game when securitizing mortgages. QRMs are defined as mortgages that will not require any form of risk retention by any entity, and below is a list of 9 loan characteristics for the [...]

There’s a new push to simplify mortgage disclosures following very recent January 2010 revisions that confused consumers more than ever. Here’s the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau’s latest on possibly combining two key mortgage disclosures: the Good Faith Estimate and Truth In Lending forms.

I would suggest that few, if any, investors know their plan yet on complying with new regulations for keeping skin in the game on securities backed residential, commercial, credit-card, and other loans.

Today links include more consumer-focused interpretations of the Fed’s new risk retention rules for mortgage securitization. If you only read one link today, read Kid Dynamite on the topic.

Writing daily market commentary can make one feel like a robot, but I’ll be so bold as to say a computer can’t do it better because market participants have too many differing agendas. That said, a robot writer just bested a sports writer. So to the financial writers linked below: watch your backs. Bleep, blorp.

Yesterday I summarized new Finreg rules requiring banks to retain at least 5% of loans they sell into secondary markets, and outlined which Qualified Residential Mortgage (QRM) loans will be exempt from this rule. The exemption debate rages, and here’s the Mortgage Bankers Association’s “profound concerns” on the matter. The QRM proposals are now open [...]

Like driving a faulty-brake Toyota, working in the mortgage industry can make you wonder if large-scale regulatory change will ever stop. Just as companies finalize their loan agent compensation plans to comply with Friday’s Finreg deadline, now the they must turn attention to what loans do and don’t fall under risk retention guidelines.