US residential mortgage industry braces for more strain

The U.S. residential mortgage finance market faces severe stress after the industry failed this week to convince regulators to launch an emergency liquidity facility needed to bridge billions of dollars of missed home loan repayments, industry sources and analysts have warned. Requests to delay mortgage payments rose 1,900% in the second half of March, according to Tuesday data from the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), which is leading the lobbying effort. That could leave mortgage servicers, which pool home loans and sell them to investors, with a liquidity shortfall of as much as $100 billion over the next nine months.