Officials at the government’s mortgage programs said that major investments in technology will make their programs more efficient and pay for themselves, during a panel session at the Mortgage Bankers Association secondary market conference last week in New York. Michelle Corridon, deputy director in the single-family housing guaranteed loan division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, said her program’s focus now is on infrastructure and innovation. The USDA is instituting a technology fee on every closed loan starting in October, she said. The enhanced online system will include new screens for housing, which now shares a landing page with other rural programs. When it’s complete, the new system will handle the process from guaranty commitment through loan delivery. In another efficiency move, rural housing is “rolling up” processing chores to fewer offices so it doesn’t have ...

California continued to lead all states in FHA and VA mortgage securitization in the first three months of 2018. The Golden State accounted for 15.3 percent of the $50.6 billion of FHA loans delivered into Ginnie Mae mortgage-backed securities in the first quarter. FHA loans comprised 18.2 percent of loans securitized by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae, and 34.6 percent of agency-securitized loans with primary mortgage insurance. About 66.6 percent of FHA loans securitized during the period were for purchase mortgages while refinance loans accounted for 27.5 percent. The average loan-to-value ratio of FHA loans in Ginnie pools was 93.0 percent. The average credit score of 668.2 reflected FHA’s traditional base of lower-income and first-time homebuyers, with an average debt-to-income ratio of 42.4 percent. The other states among the top five in terms of FHA deliveries into Ginnie pools were ... [Chart]

President Trump this week announced Michael Bright as his choice to lead Ginnie Mae, an agency under the Department of Housing and Urban Development, even as Senate Democrats continued to delay vote on his nominee for FHA commissioner. Bright is currently Ginnie Mae’s executive vice president and chief operating officer, though he has been serving as acting president since Theodore Tozer stepped down on Jan. 20, 2017. Tozer served as Ginnie president under the Obama administration for nearly seven years. Bright joined Ginnie on July 11, 2017. Previously, he served as director for financial markets at the Milken Institute and as senior vice president of BlackRock/PennyMac. During his time with Milken, Bright co-authored a paper with Ed DeMarco, former acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and currently president of the Financial Services Roundtable, which proposed to ...

With overall production levels falling, there was a modest increase in several risk vectors of FHA and VA loans pooled in Ginnie Mae mortgage-backed securities during the first quarter of 2018.A new Inside FHA/VA Lending analysis shows the average credit score for FHA loans in Ginnie MBS issued during the first quarter was 671.1, the lowest level since Ginnie began reporting loan-level data on its securities. That was down from 673.2 in the fourth quarter and 679.2 a year ago. Part of the slide in FHA credit scores likely reflects the increased share of purchase mortgages, which typically have lower scores than refinance loans. The same thing happened in the VA market, where average credit scores fell 1.1 points to 707.8 in the first quarter. A year ago, the average VA score was 710.2. Debt-to-income ratios also drifted higher, suggesting more risk of default. Among FHA loans, the average DTI rose to ... [Charts]

An approved issuer suspended last month due to alleged VA loan churning activities is back in Ginnie Mae’s multi-issuer mortgage-backed securities program. Nations Lending, ranked 97th in Inside FHA/VA Lending’s top 100 VA lenders, was reinstated after reaching a confidential agreement with Ginnie Mae, according to a source familiar with the case. The Ohio-based lender has been “fully reinstated and [again] able to use all of Ginnie Mae’s programs that are available for lenders in good faith,” said the source, who asked not to be identified. The source declined to provide details of the agreement, maintaining Nations has been very transparent and was “ahead of the curve” in terms of dealing with the churning problem. “Nations began addressing the issue even before Ginnie took action,” he said. Ginnie neither confirmed nor commented on the report. “The evidence will show what is happening in the ...

Pershing Square Holdings, one of the largest institutional investors in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac common stock, is doubling down on its investment in the two mortgage giants. But it’s taking a different tack, buying up junior preferred stock rather than increasing its holdings of common. The change in strategy was mentioned in the firm’s annual report to shareholders and comes at a time when the chances of housing-finance reform look nil for 2018. How much PSH paid for the junior preferred is unknown. According to the annual report, “Our preferred stock represents approximately 21 percent of our total investment in Fannie and Freddie, or about 1 percent of net assets.”

The average daily trading volume in agency MBS fell to $215.2 billion in March, the lowest reading of the year and the worst showing since August of 2017, according to figures compiled by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association.

The performance and returns offered by credit card ABS differ significantly by the type of firm issuing the deal, according to a recent analysis by Moody’s Investors Service.

Ginnie Mae is considering a tiered rating system to ensure that all participants in its mortgage securities program have sufficient liquidity and capital to meet their counterparty obligations. The agency is still fleshing out the idea of an “A-tier” issuer, which would likely develop into a policy in the near future, said Michael Bright, executive vice president and chief operating officer, during a recent interview with Inside FHA/VA Lending. “An A-tier issuer would be [a company that] has gone above and beyond in helping put together for us a risk management and liquidity plan that does not rely on liquidity providers, and whose defect and cure rates are low,” he explained. Such issuer/servicers also would be well capitalized. Ginnie is developing the metrics for such a system, as well as incentives for the A-tier issuers, Bright said He added that top-rated firms would be eligible for “concierge services” from the ...

Pershing Square Holdings, one of the largest speculators in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac common stock, is doubling down on its investment in the two government-sponsored enterprises by taking a different tack: Instead of increasing its positions in the common, it’s been buying up the junior preferred as well.