The Federal Home Loan Bank of New York and MAX Exchange announced a pilot program that will allow members of the New York FHLBank to sell jumbo whole loans on an open exchange platform. MAX Exchange is a peer-to-peer trading platform and clearing house for mortgages. The pilot program will include a limited number of pre-approved traditional secondary mortgage investors and a limited number of New York FHLBank members ... [Includes six briefs]

New Residential Investment plans to complete an asset purchase with Home Loan Servicing Solutions instead of a merger, the firms announced this week. New Residential agreed to pay HLSS $1.4 billion, largely in cash. The sale substantially mitigates servicer advance funding risk, according to industry analysts. The firms said New Residential acquired substantially all of the assets of HLSS and assumed substantially all of HLSS’ liabilities ...

Some $4.60 billion in jumbo mortgage-backed securities were issued in the first quarter of 2015, the highest quarterly volume seen in the aftermath of the financial crisis, according to Inside Nonconforming Markets. Jumbo MBS activity has had large swings in recent years due to shifting investor appetite and volume hasn’t been anywhere near the levels seen before 2008. However, the market recovered from an unexpected increase in interest rates ... [Includes one data chart]

Mortgage and asset securitization started 2015 with improving issuance volume and a chance to reverse last year’s paltry output. A total of $335.1 billion of residential MBS and non-mortgage ABS were issued during the first three months of 2015, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis. That was up 7.7 percent from the fourth quarter of 2014, and it was a big 34.3 percent jump from the first quarter of last year. The first quarter of 2014 was...[Includes two data charts]

A little known lender called Angel Oak Mortgage Solutions hopes to fund $540 million of product this year and generate the industry’s first nonprime non-agency MBS of the “new era” with financing provided by Nomura. According to industry officials who have viewed investor materials issued by the company – a copy of which was provided to Inside MBS & ABS – Nomura has even agreed to provide “gestation repo” warehouse credit to the privately held originator. One source who claims to have knowledge of the arrangement said...

At least three years have passed since Bank of America stopped selling new purchase-money loans into Fannie Mae securities, a drought that has benefitted at least one party: Freddie Mac. According to new figures compiled by Inside MBS & ABS, in the first quarter of 2015 BofA sold $9.57 billion of mortgages into Freddie securities, beating out Wells Fargo ($8.194 billion), which traditionally has ranked first in sales to both government-sponsored enterprises. Then again, there is...

JPMorgan Mortgage Acquisition Corp. is an “above average” aggregator of jumbo mortgages, according to a rating issued last week by Moody’s Investors Service. “JPMMAC’s strengths include the financial strength of its parent company and extensive controls which ensure consistent production quality,” the rating service said. Chase’s jumbo conduit operation buys closed loans from approved sellers and doesn’t originate mortgages. Of the approximately 9,800 jumbos ...

It’s not just structural issues that are keeping investors away from jumbo MBS; they are finding better value in other non-traditional mortgage securities products, including Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac risk-share transactions and deals backed by seasoned loans. During the fourth quarter of 2014, Javelin Mortgage Investment sold all of its holdings of prime, fixed, senior bonds from new-issue jumbo MBS. The real estate investment trust sold a total of ...

Ocwen Financial pushed back this week against claims from large investors that have worked to remove the nonbank as servicer on 119 non-agency MBS. “By all indications, the holders employed unsupportable assumptions and manipulated their analysis to advance their agenda,” Timothy Hayes, an executive vice president and general counsel at Ocwen, wrote in a letter to the trustees of the MBS in question. The letter was a response to claims made ...

Nomura Holdings is unlikely to suffer a hit in ratings because of the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s mortgage-backed securities lawsuit, but the litigation may yet prove costly to the Japanese financial holding company, according to a recent report from Fitch Ratings. Nomura went to trial on March 16 to defend itself against allegations that it misrepresented the underlying asset quality of MBS it sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac prior to the financial crisis ...