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[ad_1] Omicron fears prompt Hong Kong to expand travel curbs; Australia reports 5 cases [ad_2] Source link

[ad_1] Winter Session of Parliament 2021 Live News: The opposition leaders termed the suspension “unwarranted and undemocratic”, and alleged that the action was in violation of all rules and procedures of the Upper House. [ad_2] Source link

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[ad_1] Upbeat Australian exports, public spending temper Q3 GDP slide [ad_2] Source link

[ad_1] Earlier, on November 16, the Delhi High Court had directed CCI to decide in the matter within two weeks instead of January 4, the earlier scheduled date of hearing. [ad_2] Source link

[ad_1] The supply-chain bottleneck afflicting the global economy has its own counterpart in the world of residential mortgage-backed securities, also referred to as RMBS. One group of industry players — loan underwriters — are the chief cause of the logjam. They are in high demand for each stage of the mortgage process, yet they are in seriously short supply in a still-booming mortgage market.  Underwriters are needed at the beginning of the process to conduct due diligence on mortgage originations, and they are in demand on the back-end of the pipeline to conduct due diligence on the loans being pooled and securitized in RMBS issuances sold to investors.  With record mortgage production in recent years — some $8 trillion in total origination volume over the past two years, industry estimates show — and a resurgent private-label market this year, the pool of available underwriters has been stretched razor thin, according to executives with third-party due-diligence review (TPR) firms and bond-rating agencies interviewed for this story.  About a half-dozen RMBS issuers also were contacted for this story, including J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Redwood Trust and United Wholesale Mortgage, as well as loan aggregator MAXEX, and all either declined comment or did not respond. The same was the case with industry groups and regulators like the Mortgage Bankers Association, the National Association of Mortgage Underwriters and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The private label market share of U.S. mortgage securitizations reached 5% in 2019, then declined to 2.44% in 2020, largely because of the pandemic-spawned economic slowdown. In 2021, however, it has come roaring back, representing 3.53% of all securitizations over the first eight months of the year, according to a report by the Urban Institute’s Housing Policy Institute. “Non-agency securitization has been rampant in the first eight months of 2021 [and continuing], totaling $89.79 billion, compared to $49.69 billion in the first eight months of 2019,” the report states. Government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, along with Ginnie Mae, collectively known as the agency market, account for the balance of residential mortgage-back security (RMBS) issuances. Prior to the Great Recession some 15 years ago, however, private-label securitizations were approaching 60% of the entire U.S. RMBS market. The problem created by the current underwriter shortage is that, in some cases, it is creating backlogs for issuers seeking to have their securitization deals reviewed by bond-rating agencies who require that the loans in the pools for those transactions first be vetted by arms-length TPR firms. “Many participants have said there’s been a problem [because of the underwriter shortage],” said Roelof Slump, managing director of U.S. RMBS at New York-based Fitch Ratings. “They can’t bring [securitization] deals to market as quickly. We certainly hear that as a concern in the market.” Slump adds that it is not a new problem and “didn’t suddenly happen in October or November” of this year. “It’s been an ongoing thing,” he said. “It’s like everybody is on the same highway and going the same speed, but we just recognize that it’s going to take longer to get there.” John Toohig, managing director of whole loan trading at Raymond James in Memphis, described the dilemma as “a tremendous bottleneck,” adding that “it has to do with the third-party due-diligence providers who are the ones who have to kind of bless these deals, and there’s not enough underwriters out there [with those firms] to kind of push these deals through.” “Over the course of the year, I’ve actually gotten a lot of phone calls from originators and issuers saying, ‘Listen, you know our deal is being held up by a third-party vendor, or underwriter, and it’s going to take them three months before they can bless our deal, so can you turn these loans faster [in the whole-loan trading market]?’” The problem with delays, according to Joseph Mayhew, chief credit officer for Frisco, Texas-based Evolve Mortgage Services, which provides TPR services, is more acute for smaller or newer security issuers who don’t have established relationships with TPR firms that ensure due-diligence staff is dedicated year-round to handling a lender’s securitization volume. “It depends on who you are,” Mayhew explained. “I’ve heard timeframes of up to three months [delay], but that might have been back in January to March of this year.” He added that large issuers, such as big investment banks, “have a dedicated desk at their TPR firm [via contract], and they will sit there and wait for the loans, but they will not put anyone in front of them.” So, the delays vary, with an average now of four-to-six weeks for smaller RMBS issuers that don’t have an ongoing contract relationship with a TPR firm. For those that do, it may take as little as two or three weeks, Mayhew said.  “That’s from the time they submit a loan for TPR review to the time it comes out [of the review process],” he explained. Michael Franco, CEO of SitusAMC, which is one of the larger TPR firms providing due-diligence services for private-label transactions, stressed that assessing the extent of the impact of the underwriter shortage and resulting delays falls into the realm of being “an unknown unknown, because you don’t really know who would have done a deal had the capacity been available.” The underwriter shortage is even affecting the secondary market for mortgage-servicing rights (MSRs), Tom Piercy, managing director of Denver-based Incenter Mortgage Advisors, said.  “They don’t underwrite every loan in an MSR trade,” he explained. “But they will go through anywhere from 5% to 10% of the bulk pool. …  “There’s absolutely been cases where you’re hoping to close by a certain date, and it gets pushed out 30 days because of due diligence [needs]. …It is impacting every aspect of the market.” Quantifying the nature of the underwriter shortage, beyond anecdotes from players in the industry, however, is not so simple. There is no entity tracking the shortage across the industry. In fact, many firms have added staff over the past few

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[ad_1] WTO postponement a 'significant blow' to possible COVID vaccine, fishing deals [ad_2] Source link

[ad_1] The collections were also aided by a 11% year-on-year decline in refunds at about Rs1.22 lakh crore till November 23 of FY22. The refunds were also 16% lower than Rs1.46 lakh crore during the period in FY20. [ad_2] Source link

[ad_1] Today, pending home sales came in as a big beat of estimates — up 7.5% in October — and since we are days away from December, we can officially label the 2021 housing crash bears as even worse than the 2020 housing crash bears. Like I have often said, professional grifters have plagued the housing sector for many years and shouldn’t be looked to as fundamental economic sources of information. This is a big reason why I always have my two staple sayings. “Economics done right should be boring“ Trust me, in this day and age of the seven-second attention span, promoting doom and gloom, housing crashes and vast economic conspiracies is the best way to get clicks. I do understand that my economic takes and charts might not be the sexiest thing on the internet. However, I still believe that economics is a story best told by numbers and not ideological takes. Believe in people who believe in economic models, even if they’re not exciting.“Always be the detective, not the troll“ As you can imagine, being a very pro-American economic person, especially during this crisis, I have a target on my head. People like myself understand that it’s part of the business. Who is crazy enough to write an American economic recovery model on April 7, 2020, and try to explain to people why housing isn’t going to crash due to demographics, good credit profiles and low mortgage rates? What person would be so confident in 2020 that forbearance wasn’t going to crash housing in 2021 that they would create the term Forbearance Crash Bros to be ready to mock this group in 2021? Whatever the future brings for the U.S. economy, know that I won’t lie to you for clicks; it will be based on boring economic models that are back-tested in time and adjusted for new variables 24/7. You can glimpse my mindset in this podcast, which covers the entire COVID-19 crisis and housing. The title I do believe is fitting: Bear Crusher. From the National Association of Realtors: “The Pending Home Sales Index (PHSI), a forward-looking indicator of home sales based on contract signings, rose 7.5% to 125.2 in October. Year-over-year, signings fell 1.4%. An index of 100 is equal to the level of contract activity in 2001.” One of the themes that I wanted to give to my readers is that housing data had surged toward the end of 2020, which created a high that couldn’t be sustained. Home sales had a big gap from trending sales to where total sales closed in 2020. So, what was always going to happen was that housing data would moderate. That moderation will be viewed as housing crashing because I have seen people use this line repeatedly during the last eight years. This is why I recently wrote about what real housing or economic weakness would look like so you don’t get suckered by housing and economic crash addicts. Whatever the future brings for the U.S. economy, know that I won’t lie to you for clicks; it will be based on boring economic models that are back-tested in time and adjusted for new variables 24/7. You can glimpse my mindset in this podcast, which covers the entire COVID-19 crisis and housing. The title I do believe is fitting: Bear Crusher. From the National Association of Realtors: “The Pending Home Sales Index (PHSI), a forward-looking indicator of home sales based on contract signings, rose 7.5% to 125.2 in October. Year-over-year, signings fell 1.4%. An index of 100 is equal to the level of contract activity in 2001.” One of the themes that I wanted to give to my readers is that housing data had surged toward the end of 2020, which created a high that couldn’t be sustained. Home sales had a big gap from trending sales to where total sales closed in 2020. So, what was always going to happen was that housing data would moderate. That moderation will be viewed as housing crashing because I have seen people use this line repeatedly during the last eight years. This is why I recently wrote about what real housing or economic weakness would look like so you don’t get suckered by housing and economic crash addicts. As we can see below, housing moderated, found a base and moved higher toward the second half of 2021. I stress this as many people had sent me examples of YouTube videos with people touting a second-half housing crash. I can tell you that these people don’t have the training to read housing or economic data correctly. If they did, then the notion of a sales collapse in 2021 — when trend demand data was always showing stability — is ludicrous. Remember, be the detective, not the troll. Last week, I wrote about how the existing home sales markets outperformed my peak sales range in the past two sales reports. As long as the final two reports of the year are above 6.2 million, you should see that as a beat. Of course, total sales are above my critical level of 6.2 million when adding new home sales. So far, 2020 and 2021 have come in as a noticeable beat in my eyes. Mother Demographics and low mortgage rates are two very hard competitors to go against when advocating an epic housing crash. From NAR: “Motivated by fast-rising rents and the anticipated increase in mortgage rates, consumers that are on strong financial footing are signing contracts to purchase a home sooner rather than later,” said Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist. “This solid buying is a testament to demand still being relatively high, as it is occurring during a time when inventory is still markedly low.” Has anyone noticed that over the last eight years everyone blames low inventory when we miss estimates, but they keep quiet about it when sales are beating estimates, while inventory is still falling? Over the years, I have never believed in the premise that low inventory is holding