The share of cash-out mortgages in prime non-agency MBS has increased in recent years, prompting concerns from Moody’s Investors Service. The rating service noted that the cash-out refi share increased from around 1.0 percent in early 2012 to around 8.0 percent in the second half of 2017. The cash-out refi share has been even higher in some recent issuance. Such loans accounted for 14.9 percent of the $736.5 million deal JPMorgan Chase issued this week ...

PennyMac Financial Services re-started its jumbo mortgage origination operations in the first quarter with plans to return as an issuer of jumbo mortgage-backed securities. The nonbank locked $21.0 million in jumbo production as of the end of March. Ocwen Financial reported net income of $2.6 million for the first quarter of 2018, putting a halt to an extended streak of quarterly losses. Ocwen is the largest subprime mortgage servicer, by far, and the firm ... [Includes three briefs]

With overall production levels falling, there was a modest increase in several risk vectors of FHA and VA loans pooled in Ginnie Mae mortgage-backed securities during the first quarter of 2018.A new Inside FHA/VA Lending analysis shows the average credit score for FHA loans in Ginnie MBS issued during the first quarter was 671.1, the lowest level since Ginnie began reporting loan-level data on its securities. That was down from 673.2 in the fourth quarter and 679.2 a year ago. Part of the slide in FHA credit scores likely reflects the increased share of purchase mortgages, which typically have lower scores than refinance loans. The same thing happened in the VA market, where average credit scores fell 1.1 points to 707.8 in the first quarter. A year ago, the average VA score was 710.2. Debt-to-income ratios also drifted higher, suggesting more risk of default. Among FHA loans, the average DTI rose to ... [Charts]

Reverse mortgage lenders chalked up a win in Florida’s Third District Court of Appeal on the question of whether surviving spouses of borrowers who had taken out a Home Equity Conversion Mortgage loan also qualified as “borrowers” and, therefore, cannot be evicted from the property after the death of the borrower. The appellate court’s ruling contradicted two previous court rulings in Smith v. Reverse Mortgage Solutions, Inc. and Edwards v. Reverse Mortgage Solutions, Inc. Both rulings held that surviving spouses of deceased HECM borrowers also qualified as “borrowers” under the terms of the mortgage and, therefore, entitled to protection from eviction. However, in One West Bank, FSB v. Palmero, the appellate court changed course and outlined the conditions under which a lender could prove that “borrower” meant only the person who actually had taken out the reverse ...

The Department of Veterans Affairs has drafted a proposed rule to curb predatory loan churning. The draft rule is “well on its way through concurrence with VA and the Office of Management and Budget,” said Jeff London, director of the VA Loan Guaranty Service, during an interview at the agency’s 19t Annual Lender Conference in Miami recently. He did not specify a publication date but said the proposed rule will be published “fairly soon.” Churning, or serial refinancing, involves multiple refinances of the same loan within short periods with no clear benefit to the borrower. In addition, churning triggers rapid prepayments in Ginnie Mae mortgage-backed securities to the detriment of investors and makes it difficult to price MBS appropriately. London declined to provide details about the rule’s content but said veterans and taxpayers would be protected. VA looked at a range of things that were common in the ...

Issuance of prime jumbo mortgage-backed securities is on the rise but underwriting standards for loans in the deals aren’t changing much, according to a new analysis by Inside Nonconforming Markets. Some $4.23 billion of prime jumbo MBS was issued in the first quarter of 2018, the highest quarterly volume for the sector since the first three months of 2015. Issuers in the sector have largely maintained super-prime underwriting standards since the financial crisis ... [Includes two data charts]

Chimera Investment, JPMorgan Chase and Redwood Trust plan to issue new prime non-agency mortgage-backed securities in the coming weeks, adding to momentum in a market where most issuers are optimistic about production volume. The planned CIM Trust 2018-J1 would mark a return to the jumbo MBS market for Chimera. The real estate investment trust has focused its issuance efforts on seasoned mortgages in recent years after dabbling in jumbo MBS around 2012 ...

Full third-party due diligence reviews were completed on only 20.0 percent of the loans being pooled by Flagstar Bank into a new non-agency mortgage-backed security. Rating services delivered mixed assessments of the due diligence sampling rate, which could set a standard for the market. The $704.1 million Flagstar Mortgage Trust 2018-2 is scheduled to close at the end of the month. DBRS, Fitch Ratings, Kroll Bond Rating Agency and Moody’s Investors Service all ...

SG Capital Partners is set to issue its first rated nonprime mortgage-backed security after bringing to market some unrated deals in recent years and aggregating loans in a rated nonprime MBS issued by a competitor. Morningstar Credit Ratings and S&P Global Ratings assigned preliminary AAA ratings to the planned $140.1 million SG Residential Mortgage Trust 2018-1 last week. Somewhat unusually, the rating services came up with different figures on the share of non-qualified mortgages ...

Redwood Trust is set to issue a “bespoke” prime non-agency mortgage-backed security. The deal largely looks like other MBS from Redwood, but a spokesperson for the real estate investment trust said the MBS was tailored for one investor. Kroll Bond Rating Agency placed preliminary ratings on the planned $338.7 million Sequoia Mortgage Trust 2018-4 last week. The deal is scheduled to close on April 20. There are only minor differences between the MBS and three other ...