The housing market finally appears to be on the mend, but the “shadow” inventory of housing that is unoccupied but has not yet been released into the market, either as a rental property or sale listing bears watching.

The Bank of England’s Funding for Lending Scheme (FLS) has slowed U.K. RMBS issuance and is partly responsible for a slowdown in European securitization issuance in October, according to Standard & Poor’s.

November prepayments were not as bad as investors feared, given the collision of elevated refinancing activity on lower mortgage rates in response to QE3 and the rush by servicers to close loans before guarantee fees increased on Dec. 1.

Due diligence provider Allonhill LLC, Denver, Thursday afternoon laid off 140 staff workers and contractors as part of a company-wide restructuring.

Belgium’s KBC issued its inaugural covered bonds to strong investor appetite that saw orders for the bank’s €1.5 billion ($1.9bn) benchmark swell to €6bn.

The 2012 tally for CLO issuance is bound to surpass $47 billion this week, according to Standard & Poor’s.

The balance of specially serviced CMBS loans posted its eighth consecutive monthly decrease in November, but analysts at Deutsche Bank said in their 2013 CMBS outlook report that loans are not being modified or liquidated like they used to be.

Societe Generale said it hired Warren Geiger as a managing director and senior CMBS trader in New York.

RBC Capital Markets hired Ming Tang to its new collateralized loan obligations (CLOs) trading team, a spokesperson with the bank confirmed this week.

Moody’s Investor Service has assigned a Prime-1 rating to Royal Bank of Canada’s $10 Billion ABCP Program called Bedford Row Funding Corp.

Trepp LLC said in a report today that November CMBS delinquency rates increased by 2 basis points, reversing a consecutive three month declining trend.