Increasingly worried about the financial condition of its largest nonbank issuers amid declining market conditions, Ginnie Mae in late October shot off a liquidity letter to 14 companies, asking them to develop contingency plans. The identity of the firms was not revealed to Inside FHA/VA Lending, but it’s no secret which companies rank among the top echelon of issuer/servicers. The five largest nonbank Ginnie MBS servicers as of Sept. 30 are PennyMac Financial Services, Lakeview Loan Servicing, Freedom Mortgage, Quicken Loans and Mr. Cooper. According to the letter, a copy of which was obtained by this publication, Ginnie wants the companies to develop strategies to right-size their operations. One of the agency’s goals is to lay the groundwork for financial stress tests that all issuer/servicers eventually must meet. Ginnie expects to sit down with the executive management teams of the ...

Real estate investment trusts boosted their holdings of residential MBS during the third quarter, a period when two firms were acquired by larger players. [Includes one data chart.]

Strong demand in the secondary market for jumbo mortgages lifted Redwood Trust’s mortgage banking income during the third quarter even though the volume of loans it acquired declined. Redwood had $11.24 million in non-interest income from mortgage banking activities in the third quarter, up 5.9 percent from the previous quarter. The metric tracks Redwood’s loan aggregation and sales. The real estate investment trust’s jumbo conduit acquired mortgages with an unpaid principal balance ...

Fannie Mae’s last Connecticut Avenue Securities credit-risk transfer transaction of the year featured its first use of a structure geared toward attracting more investors. CAS Series 2018-R07, a $922 million offering, is Fannie’s first risk-transfer deal involving a real estate mortgage investment conduit (REMIC). Both Fannie and Freddie see REMICs as a key to unlocking greater participation by real estate investment trusts and offshore investors. Freddie issued its first CRT using a REMIC ...

Goldman Sachs has forgiven a total of $78.7 million in principal on 746 first-lien mortgages since Aug. 1, 2018, as it neared fulfillment of a $1.8 billion consumer-relief obligation under two mortgage-related settlement agreements, according to independent monitor Eric Green.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac transferred risk on about $367 billion of unpaid principal balance in the first half of the year as the GSEs target a larger share of single-family loans. The Federal Housing Finance Agency published a credit-risk transfer progress report last week highlighting activity through the second quarter of 2018. This report marks the first time the FHFA is reporting the percentage of the GSEs’ targeted single-family and multifamily acquisitions that are covered by credit-risk transfer ...

A proposal issued by federal regulators last week to ease certain standards for capital and liquidity will likely prompt banks to reduce their holdings of MBS, according to industry analysts. The complex proposal could prompt a $65.0 billion reduction in bank holdings of MBS, according to estimates by the Federal Reserve and Wells Fargo Securities.

The Structured Finance Industry Group continues to wrestle with the demons of the past, the myriad issues that contributed to the downfall of the MBS and ABS markets a decade ago. Individuals working on various workstreams offered progress reports, stressing that the project is focused on best practices rather than rigid standards, at the group’s Residential Mortgage Finance Symposium in New York this week.

One large fixed income investor is working with clients now to make sure they’re prepared to invest in the new single security when it rolls out next summer. Western Asset Management is advising investors to consider aggregating their mortgage concentration and exposure limits for the uniform MBS that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will issue in the to-be-announced market.

An affiliate of Verus Mortgage Capital revised the structure of a planned non-agency mortgage-backed security, opting for a more traditional approach after initially planning to test a unique variation. The planned closing date for the $442.3 million issuance was also pushed back. When presale reports for Verus Securitization Trust 2018-3 were published in mid-October, the deal was structured with an initial pro rata structure that would shift to a sequential structure. The MBS ...