Ocwen Financial accounted for slightly more than half of the modifications completed under the new Streamline Home Affordable Modification Program offering, according to the company. Streamline HAMP mods are only available for non-agency mortgages. The program is aimed at borrowers who meet general HAMP eligibility criteria but haven’t completed a loan mod application by the time their loan is 90 days delinquent. It’s streamlined in that no income documentation is ...

CORRECTION: Redwood Trust’s Choice program doesn’t allow for stated-income documentation, as originally reported in the Sept. 9, 2016, issue of Inside Nonconforming Markets. And Redwood does allow underwriting exceptions for Choice mortgages, a change that was made after the program was introduced. The baseline conforming loan limit for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will likely go up to about $422,000 in 2017, according to an Inside ... [Includes four briefs]

A federal district court judge in Manhattan has named a lead master to review 9,342 mortgages for material breaches following a put-back trial against UBS Real Estate Securities. The trial in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York will determine whether UBS breached certain representations and warranties and may have to repurchase the defective loans originally pooled in three trusts. U.S. Bank, the trustee for all three pools, is seeking more than $2 billion in damages, court filings show. U.S. Bank sued...

Bank and thrift holdings of first-lien mortgages increased by 2.4 percent in the second quarter of 2016, according to an Inside Nonconforming Markets analysis of bank and thrift call reports. The holdings were boosted by jumbo mortgages, with few of the loans being delivered into mortgage-backed securities. Banks and thrifts held $1.90 trillion in first liens as of the end of June, up $44.22 billion from the end of March. Some $101.00 billion in jumbos were ... [Includes one data chart]

The next mortgage-backed security from Lone Star Funds backed by new nonprime originations will be larger than the deal it issued in June, according to presale reports published this week. The planned $216.97 million COLT 2016-2 will be the largest MBS backed by post-crisis nonprime originations, topping the $161.71 million COLT 2016-1. The MBS scheduled to close next week differs in some ways from the previous MBS from Lone Star. The firm’s Caliber Home Loans ...

Angel Oak Mortgage Solutions has significantly increased its nonprime wholesale lending this year, according to an offering document for the $132.65 million nonprime mortgage-backed security recently issued by Angel Oak Capital Advisors. AOMS originated $222.25 million in nonprime wholesale originations in the first half of this year, nearlyl matching its $224.16 million total for all of last year. But retail production at Angel Oak Home Loans has declined ...

The looser underwriting standards Redwood Trust rolled out earlier this year for jumbo mortgages are aimed at aggregating loans that banks won’t necessarily acquire, according to officials at the real estate investment trust. Redwood introduced its “Choice” program in April, allowing for credit scores as low as 661, debt-to-income ratios as high as 49.99 percent and combined loan-to-value ratios up to 90.0 percent. The characteristics aren’t all allowed on the same loan. For a ...

A number of non-agency lenders are looking to originate mortgages for investment properties using a debt-to-income ratio based on income from the property rather than the borrower’s income, according to Moody’s Investors Service. “Using property DTI underwriting on loans secured by single investment properties introduces risks stemming from the lack of visibility on a borrower’s other debt obligations relative to a steady source of income that lenders can ...

A total of $333.1 billion of residential MBS backed by freshly originated home loans were issued during the second quarter of 2016, a 30.3 percent increase over the first three months of the year. But that trailed the 34.2 percent surge in primary-market originations during the same period. The result was a further decline in the mortgage securitization rate, from 67.3 percent in the first quarter to 65.3 percent in the second, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis. It marked the lowest securitization rate since 2004, when the non-agency MBS market was just beginning to take off. The biggest decline was...[Includes one data table]

Strong competition among big banks helped increase originations of jumbo mortgages during the second quarter, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside Nonconforming Markets. An estimated $101.0 billion in jumbos were originated in the second quarter, up 31.2 percent from the previous quarter. Through the first half of 2016, an estimated $178.0 billion in jumbos were originated, a 7.9 percent increase from the first half of 2015. Jumbo mortgages ... [Includes one data chart]