The Evolution of Securitization in Multifamily Mortgage markets and Its Effect on lending Rates

Loan purchase and securitization by Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae and private-label commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) grew rapidly during the 1990s and accounted for more than one-half of the net growth in multifamily debt over the decade. By facilitating the integration of the multifamily mortgage market into the broader capital markets, securitization helped to create new sources of credit as some traditional portfolio investors—savings institutions and life insurers—reduced their share of loan holdings. A model of commercial mortgage rates at life insurers, expressed relative to a comparable-term Treasury yield, was estimated over a twenty-two-year period. The parameter estimates supported an option-based pricing model of rate determination; proxies for CMBS activity showed no significant effect.

De-Mystifying the Refi-Share Mystery

The refinance shares reported by Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey (PMMS), the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA), and the National Mortgage News (NMN) have differed by up to 21 percentage points between 1990 and 2005. If a lender’s refinance share varies with loan volume, then weighting by origination volume could explain the observed discrepancies. Based on HMDA data for 2000 (a low refinance year) and 2003 (a refinance boom), lender size was positively related to refinance share, after controlling for institution type, cultural affinity, and location. HMDA provides the best national measure of refinance share, and weighting by lender volume explains most of the difference among the four measures.