Goldman Sachs affiliates completed the acquisition of $900 million in subprime loans and mortgage servicing assets from Popular Inc., an announcement earlier this month said. Popular unloaded the assets at a discount of as much as $200 million.

Kondaur Capital Corp. said last week that it obtained a $150 million capital commitment from a “New York financial institution” that had previously been a co-investor of loan portfolios. Kondaur will use the new capital to pursue its acquisition of scratch-and-dent loans with regulatory, underwriting or performance issues.

The Government National Mortgage Association clarified this month that 90-day past-due loans may be purchased from a pool without Ginnie’s permission. The government-owned corporation hopes to facilitate improved loss mitigation with the clarification.

“Ginnie Mae encourages its issuers to identify such loans as soon as possible, and to pursue loss mitigation strategies consistent with guidance from the FHA, VA, RD and PIH,” memorandum APM 08-23 said. “While Issuers are prohibited from modifying the terms of loans held in Ginnie Mae pools, certain loss mitigation strategies, such as special-forbearance and partial-claim options described in FHA loss mitigation guidance, do not alter the terms of the loan, and therefore may be accomplished without repurchase of the delinquent loan from the pool.”

The Washington, D.C.-based secondary lender said yesterday in memorandum APM 08-25 that single-family loans up to $417,000 will be eligible for Ginnie Mae I and Ginnie Mae II Mortgage-Backed Securities as a result of amendments made by the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008. Two-unit mortgages are eligible up to $533,850, while the three-unit limit is $645,300 and the four-unit limit is $801,950.

High-balance loans are limited to 10 percent of a pool and are effective on issuances on Jan. 1, 2009, or later.

The electronic funds transfers process will no longer be available for payments to Ginnie on Dec. 1, memorandum MPM 08-08 today said. Instead, participants will utilize Pay.gov — a secure government-wide Internet collection portal that is used by the federal government to collect non-tax revenue. Pay.gov allows participants to make payments up to $100 million for free using the automated clearing house system.

Tradeweb announced the acquisition of Hilliard Farber, an inter-dealer voice brokerage for mortgage-related securities. Hilliard — which claims to be one of the first inter-dealer brokers to trade mortgage-backed securities when it launched from Manhattan in 1975 — will handle specialty mortgage products, pass-through MBS and adjustable-rate mortgages.

Tradeweb also said it plans to launch an electronic inter-dealer platform for pass-through mortgage-backed securities early next year.

In commercial mortgage secondary marketing, Ladder Capital Finance LLC announced it launched this month with $1 billion in capital. Among activities at the New York-based specialty finance company are the purchase of commercial mortgages.

Mission Capital Advisors LLC reported this month that it has brokered the sale of $11.4 billion in loans during the past year. It boasted a 91 percent closing rate. Since June 2007, the firm said it has advised sellers on 24 different whole-loan sale transactions for $9.9 billion, while lifetime transactions total more than $20 billion.

The New York-based company recently reported that it is accepting bids for the following portfolios:

Sam Garcia worked in mortgage lending for twenty years prior to becoming publisher of MortgageDaily.com.

e-mail: mtgsam@aol.com