One of the major obstacles to increased issuance of non-agency mortgage-backed securities remains the lack of a deal agent to protect investors. Until last week, investors had not even agreed on the general responsibilities for a deal agent, suggesting that the implementation of the concept was a long way off. A working group, co-led by Alessandro Pagani, head of securitized assets at Loomis, Sayles & Company, announced principles for a deal agent last week ...

Two nonbanks with jumbo conduit operations have faced issues recently. Premium Point Investments recently announced the New Issue Opportunity Fund will no longer invest in new jumbo mortgage-backed securities from WinWater Home Mortgage. Premium Point is an asset-management firm that established WinWater in late 2013. Premium Point said the NIOF purchased approximately $3.3 billion in whole loans and invested in 10 mortgage-backed securities issued by ...

Poor underwriting, rather than the collapse of house prices, more likely caused homeowners to default on their non-agency mortgage loans – a situation that gradually worsened and subsequently caused the country’s worst financial disaster, according to a new report published by University Financial Associates. Subject to a number of caveats, the report’s findings dramatically illustrate the importance of eroding underwriting quality in non-agency mortgage-backed securities ...

A working group led by potential investors in new non-agency MBS detailed principles for the role of a deal agent this week, signifying some progress in reform efforts. However, a revival of the non-agency MBS market looks a ways off as other industry participants consider how a deal agent will actually function. “We are now at a transition point for non-agency MBS reform efforts, where some market participants can start moving from a principles-level discussion to contractual negotiations,” Monique Rollins, deputy assistant secretary at the Treasury Department, said at the ABS Vegas conference produced by Information Management Network and the Structured Finance Industry Group. The Treasury helped facilitate...

Years of warnings from securities issuers and investors about regulatory uncertainty appear to have shifted to actual consequences as liquidity in the MBS and ABS markets has declined significantly in recent months. Almost every panel session at the ABS Vegas conference produced by Information Management Network and the Structured Finance Industry Group this week included comments regarding liquidity and regulation. Daniel McGarvey, the head of U.S. asset-backed products origination at Societe Generale, noted that in recent months spreads on MBS and ABS have increased due to illiquidity. “Credit risk is not currently a driver of credit spreads,” he said. “This should be a concern for all of us in the securitization market.” Delinquencies and losses, traditional factors in liquidity, remain...

Analysts at Morningstar Credit Ratings have begun to see non-agency single-property investor loans materialize with a new twist: less dependence on the borrower’s ability to repay and more reliance on the cash flow stream of rental income. “The majority of loans made to landlords backed by single properties are underwritten as consumer loans, not business-purpose loans. The lender will scrutinize the borrower’s credit, income and assets,” RMBS analysts Brian Grow, Becky Cao and Olgay Cangur said in a new report. Also, rental income is included as part of the borrower’s overall income when calculating the borrower’s personal debt/income ratio and, thus, the probability of default. “Recently, Morningstar has been presented...

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau plans to host a call-in with a handful of trade groups shortly regarding delays and secondary market snafus caused by its integrated disclosure rule, but whether any true regulatory relief will be offered remains to be seen. In the meantime, industry officials continue to complain about delays in loan closings caused by the so-called TRID rule and the losses incurred by some nonbanks because loans are sitting on warehouse lines longer, especially non-agency jumbo loans. Late this week, Dave Stevens, president and CEO of the Mortgage Bankers Association, told...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac continued to trim their retained investment portfolios in late 2015 with most of the focus on shrinking their non-agency MBS and holdings of their own securities. Freddie Mac’s retained mortgage portfolio declined 15.1 percent last year, ending at $346.91 billion, safely below the $359.3 billion cap set by the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The government-sponsored enterprise reduced its non-agency MBS holdings by $25.60 billion, or 38.8 percent, from its yearend 2014 level. While that included hefty declines in both subprime and Alt A MBS, the biggest decline, 41.3 percent, was...[Includes one data table]

Fannie Mae has been actively buying delinquent mortgages out of MBS trusts and plans to eventually issue securities collateralized by the loans, said Timothy Mayopoulos, CEO of the government-sponsored enterprise. During a recent earnings call and question-and-answer period with the press, the CEO noted that the GSE has bought a “substantial” number of mortgages out of trusts with the goal of making them performing again. “Over the next year or two,” Fannie will...

The California Supreme Court late last week issued a ruling in a case where a borrower challenged the foreclosure of a loan that was included in a non-agency MBS issued in 2007. The court allowed the borrower’s claims to proceed, which could prompt a significant increase in foreclosure-related litigation for California mortgages in non-agency MBS. An opinion authored by Kathryn Werdegar, an associate justice of the California Supreme Court, stresses that the court’s ruling in Yvanova v. New Century Mortgage is narrow. “We hold only that a borrower who has suffered a non-judicial foreclosure does not lack standing to sue for wrongful foreclosure based on an allegedly void assignment merely because he or she was in default on the loan and was not a party to the challenged assignment,” Werdegar said. The ruling left...