Matthew D. Bass

With a US housing recovery in full swing, this may be a good time for investors to consider securities backed by residential real estate. We think they’re an attractive way to diversify exposure to high-yield bonds and other risk-seeking assets.

Pension fund managers, like many investors, have historically paid a premium for liquidity. Lately they’ve started to realize that liquidity can be an illusion—but it can also be an opportunity.

A recent US Senate bill calls for a restructuring of the government's role in housing finance, including winding down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Here are five takeaways from the current proposal.

We don’t usually think of rising rates as being good for homeowners. That may be because we’re accustomed to thinking of financing (and refinancing) as the key to reviving sagging housing markets. And it’s true that financing availability remains tight, at least by historical standards, and isn’t going to get looser with rising rates.

Is the mortgage trade over? No, and in some ways, it’s just beginning.

There’s a growing consensus today that the US government’s huge footprint in the $10.5 trillion mortgage market needs to shrink, with the private sector taking the lead. But there is less agreement on how the transition to a new system should take place. Here’s our perspective as investors in the mortgage market on what is needed to get the ball rolling.

The US government’s housing finance policies in recent decades can be summarized by one simple phrase: quantity over quality. The implicit goal was to increase the quantity of housing finance by keeping mortgage rates low and promoting wider home ownership. For several decades, the system worked. But if we view the long-term stability of home prices as one measure of the quality of housing finance, those policies now don’t look so successful.