A flurry of prime non-agency mortgage-backed securities priced in October with issuance from JPMorgan Chase, Flagstar Bank and American International Group totalling $2.13 billion. Chase brought a $911.1 million deal backed by a higher than usual share of mortgages eligible for sale to the government-sponsored enterprises. Some 46.7 percent of the dollar volume of loans backing JPMorgan Mortgage Trust 2017-4 was loans eligible for sale to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac ...
Read More
Two regional banks posted varied results in terms of jumbo originations in the third quarter of 2017. Flagstar Bank boosted its production while First Republic Bank’s originations fell on a quarterly basis and were up compared with the third quarter of 2016. Flagstar had $2.90 billion in jumbo originations in the third quarter, a 31.8 percent increase from the previous quarter and up 61.1 percent from the third quarter of 2016. Officials at Flagstar noted that the bank’s jumbo originations were ...
Read More
Citadel Servicing Corp. continues to ready its first nonprime mortgage-backed security and received risk assessments from Morningstar Credit Ratings last week. The rating service evaluated Citadel as a lender and servicer, assigning it level-three rankings on a scale of one to four, with four being the worst. The assessment, along with a similar assessment by Fitch Ratings earlier this year, show that Citadel is taking steps toward issuing rated nonprime MBS. Sources close to ...
Read More
Banks tend to approve a much higher share of applications for jumbo mortgages than nonbanks, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside Nonconforming Markets based on new Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data. In 2016, the denial rate for applications for jumbo mortgages was 18.6 percent. The rate tracks total loan applications for jumbo mortgages last year (495,213) and denied applications. The calculation excludes withdrawn applications and ... [Includes one data chart]
Read More
Providers of third-party due diligence services for non-agency mortgages are considering standardizing portions of the review and reporting process, according to Fitch Ratings. The rating service hosted a roundtable with a number of due diligence firms this month and provided some details on the meeting last week. “Participants agreed that increased focus on consensus where appropriate benefits the market as it mitigates pressures that third-party review firms may be ...
Read More
As Congress works on legislation aimed at reforming the roles of the government-sponsored enterprises, provisions regarding practices in the non-agency mortgage-backed security market should be included in the legislation, according to the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association. Kevin Chavers, a managing director at BlackRock, testified on behalf of SIFMA at a hearing this week by the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Housing and Insurance ...
Read More
Underwriting standards for the mortgages included in prime non-agency mortgage-backed securities in the third quarter were largely unchanged from the types of loans seen in the market the past year, according to a new analysis by Inside Nonconforming Markets. The average credit score on prime non-agency MBS issued in the third quarter was 770.3, down from 772.3 the previous quarter but up from 766.4 in the third quarter of 2016. Average debt-to-income ... [Includes one data chart]
Read More
Investors in jumbo mortgage-backed securities face relatively low exposure to potential losses related to fires in California, according to an analysis by Moody’s Investors Service. The rating service said 2.9 percent of the outstanding mortgages in post-crisis jumbo MBS rated by Moody’s are in counties affected by the recent fires. And while some borrowers may suffer losses because of insufficient insurance coverage, Moody’s said hazard insurance and servicers’ ... [Includes two briefs]
Read More