Issuance of single-family rental securitizations has been lagging this year, but a new offering from Progress Residential suggests that demand for deals could be headed northward. In a somewhat uncommon move last week, Progress increased a planned issuance after presale reports on the deal were already published. “The transaction sponsor elected...

Bipartisan Flood Bill Introduced in Senate. The Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs will soon consider a bipartisan bill introduced this week that would keep the National Flood Insurance Program funded for six more years and create new risk mitigation procedures for communities to follow.Senate Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, R-ID, and ranking Democrat Sherrod Brown, OH, said the bill would serve as a template for consideration by the whole committee. The Senate bill does not include core provisions in the House version, including the development of a private flood insurance market to complement the NFIP. In addition, the bill does not call for cuts in the reimbursement rate for Write-Your-Own flood-insurance carriers that service NFIP policies. However, amendments are likely, according to Crapo and Brown. Meanwhile, the ...

A resolution of the charges against Ocwen Financial brought by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and state regulators is expected to be “protracted,” according to industry analysts. In April, the CFPB and state regulators took a number of actions against the nonbank, alleging servicing- and lending-related violations. Ocwen is appealing the findings. The legal issues prompted mixed reactions from rating services. Fitch Ratings affirmed its B- issuer-default rating for ...

Ginnie Mae issuers were moderately busier in the second quarter of 2017 than during the first three months of the year, according to a new analysis and ranking by Inside FHA/VA Lending. Issuers produced $112.71 billion of single-family mortgage-backed securities during the second quarter, including MBS backed by FHA home-equity conversion mortgages. It was a 5.5 percent increase from the previous period and brought year-to-date issuance to $219.51 billion, down 0.7 percent from the first half of 2016. The quarterly uptick in total issuance may not sound like much, but contrasts sharply with production at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which dropped 13.1 percent from the first to the second quarter. Ginnie volume was up because it had a deeper vein of purchase-money mortgages than there was in the government-sponsored enterprise market. Purchase loans accounted for 63.4 percent of ... [Charts]

Communication among investors in non-agency MBS looks to be increasingly important. Fitch Ratings has included an assessment of a deal’s bondholder communication platform in revised criteria for residential MBS while the Structured Finance Industry Group continues to work on recommendations for bondholder communication. “Fitch views the inclusion of a bondholder communication platform as a best practice for rep-and-warrant frameworks, particularly in transactions that rely on bondholder votes to influence rep-and-warrant review decisions,” the rating service said. Fitch said...

Less than $1 million separated Fitch Ratings and DBRS in the ranking of top rating agencies serving the non-agency MBS market in the first quarter of 2017, a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis reveals. Fitch was on top, although both companies had equal shares (36.5 percent) of the market. Kroll Bond Rating (21.7 percent) and Moody’s Investors Services (17.5 percent) ranked third and fourth. S&P Global was the least active rater of non-agency MBS with just an 11.5 percent share. A significant share of non-agency MBS are issued...[Includes two data tables]

One of the most significant variables industry participants are working to address in terms of introducing a deal agent into non-agency mortgage-backed securities is the fee structure. Issuers are trying to balance paying for the services provided by a deal agent without diverting too much cash flow from investors in non-agency MBS. The fee structure will also play a key role in how rating services treat MBS that have a deal agent, with issuers looking for favorable treatment ...

June is shaping up to be a strong month for the non-agency MBS market with a handful of new deals that reflect the character of the sector: a reliance on scratch-and-dent transactions mixed with an emerging nonprime component and opportunistic prime jumbo issuance. Five non-agency MBS totaling $1.90 billion hit the market in the first week of June, with three S&D deals accounting for $1.30 billion of the total. The biggest of these was...

Deephaven Mortgage LLC soon will issue its second securitization of nonprime mortgages of this year, a $250.1 million deal backed by a variety of loans that fall outside of the legal safe harbor for qualified-mortgage status. Presale reports from S&P Global and Kroll Bond Rating Agency indicate that 45.6 percent of the loans were acquired from Angel Oak Mortgage Solutions, with the rest coming from Deephaven. Shellpoint Mortgage Servicing will service all the loans. The mortgages were originated...

Credit Suisse this week issued a $91.2 million non-agency MBS backed by seasoned FHA mortgages. CSMC 2017-FHA1 marked the first non-agency securitization of re-performing FHA mortgages since 2010. The deal received an A rating from DBRS and an A1 rating from Moody’s Investors Service with subordination of 16.50 percent on the senior tranche. Moody’s cited a number of credit “challenges,” including uncertainty about FHA insurance payouts for liquidated mortgages, insufficient information on loan modifications and weak representations and warranties. The mortgages in the deal have...