Flagstar Bancorp announced that it’s set to acquire certain assets of Opes Advisors, including the nonbank’s origination unit. Opes focuses on purchase mortgages on the west coast through the retail channel. Opes was the 39th-ranked jumbo lender in 2015, with $1.02 billion in jumbo originations, according to an Inside Nonconforming Markets analysis of data from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. Jumbos accounted for 40.6 percent ... [Includes three briefs]

As first quarters go, the start to 2017 was relatively strong, but total issuance was down sharply from the previous period, a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis and ranking reveals. The market produced a total of $394.08 billion of residential MBS and non-mortgage ABS during the first three months of 2017, an 18.5 percent decline from the fourth quarter of last year. Production, however, was up 23.7 percent from the same period a year ago, and it was the strongest start since the first quarter of 2013, when agency mortgage refinance activity was running white-hot. In 2017, the agency MBS sector is...[Includes three data tables]

Investors in Taiwan held $208.1 billion of agency MBS, non-agency MBS and ABS at the midway point of 2016, making it the largest overseas investor in the market, according to preliminary Treasury Department data. Taiwan increased its holdings of U.S. MBS and ABS by 9.6 percent from the midway point in 2015, a time period during which overall foreign investment was flat. Treasury releases annual estimates of U.S. MBS and ABS by individual foreign countries as of the middle of each year. The estimates include both government-related and private-sector investors domiciled in the country. Mainland China had been...[Includes one data table]

Issuance of prime non-agency mortgage-backed securities increased by 65.3 percent in the first quarter of 2017 compared with the previous quarter, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside Nonconforming Markets. Some $2.60 billion in prime non-agency MBS were issued in the first quarter. Volume was boosted by relatively strong demand from investors, the emergence of a new participant and the return of a firm that has largely ... [Includes one data chart]

Lenders originating so-called conforming-jumbo mortgages that are eligible for sale to the government-sponsored enterprises continue to see better execution by delivering those loans to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac instead of packaging them in non-agency mortgage-backed securities. However, conforming jumbos accounted for 36.3 percent of the $1.03 billion non-agency MBS JPMorgan Chase issued in February. And other banks could follow in placing such ...

An affiliate of Shelter Growth Capital Partners issued a $119.87 million mortgage-backed security backed by newly originated nonprime mortgages this week. It’s the second nonprime MBS from SG Capital Partners, following a $113.71 million deal in October. The new issuance is fairly similar to the previous MBS from the firm, including relatively large loan balances and many adjustable-rate mortgages. SG Residential Mortgage Trust 2017-1 included mortgages with an ...

Ocwen Financial announced that it signed an agreement with the New York State Department of Financial Services this week to terminate the state regulator’s third-party operations monitor at Ocwen on April 14. Ocwen said the agreement provides a path for the nonbank to receive approval from the NYDFS to resume acquiring mortgage servicing rights. The Structured Finance Industry Group is preparing the next phase of its effort to revive the non-agency ... [Includes two briefs]

Fitch Ratings was the most active provider of credit ratings for non-mortgage ABS and non-agency MBS in 2016, a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis reveals. Fitch edged out Standard & Poor’s in a busy ABS market, garnering a 54.8 percent share of rated transactions last year. The company boosted its ABS ratings business by 4.6 percent compared to 2015, based on dollar volume, nudging its market share up 1.9 percentage points. Fitch’s deepest penetration was...[Includes two data tables]

A proposal from a former high-ranking official at S&P Global Ratings to reduce incentives for rating shopping has been met with skepticism and resistance from officials at other rating services. Howard Esaki, the former global head of securitization research at S&P Global Ratings, and Lawrence White, a professor of economics, NYU Stern School of Business, recently published a proposal to reform the process for how rating services are selected to grade MBS and ABS. They said...

Thanks to strong growth in the agency market, the supply of single-family MBS outstanding continued to grow over the final three months of 2016, a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis reveals. Agency MBS outstanding pushed to a new record, $6.034 trillion, as of the end of last year. The biggest gainer continued to be Ginnie Mae, which reported a 2.2 percent increase in the fourth quarter and a 7.7 percent gain for the year. Freddie Mac matched Ginnie’s fourth-quarter increase, but its year-to-date gain was smaller, 4.2 percent. Fannie Mae had...[Includes two data tables]