The Senate last week approved a regulatory relief bill that would grant qualified mortgage status to certain loans held in portfolio by smaller banks even if the mortgages would otherwise be non-QMs. The portfolio QM provision also has support in the House, but it has prompted concerns from some industry analysts. Moody’s Investors Service noted that if the provision becomes law, small banks won’t have to meet certain documentation requirements included in the Consumer ...

Angel Oak Prime Bridge, a lender offering short-term financing for house flippers, hopes to increase originations this year by more than five times the volume it produced in 2017. AOPB had more than $130.0 million in originations in 2017, according to Robert Malcahy, a senior vice president at the lender. He said the originations were focused in the Southeast. “In 2018, we have an expanded footprint and product offering targeted volume over $700.0 million,” Malcahy said ...

JPMorgan Chase is set to issue another non-agency mortgage-backed security mixing jumbo mortgages and loans eligible for sale to the government-sponsored enterprises. DBRS, Moody’s Investors Service and S&P Global Ratings assigned preliminary AAA ratings to the planned $866.07 million JPMorgan Mortgage Trust 2018-3 this week. Some 1,348 loans will be included in the issuance, divided nearly evenly between jumbo mortgages and loans eligible for sale to the government-sponsored ...

Angel Oak Capital Advisors is preparing to issue its first non-agency mortgage-backed security of the year backed by non-qualified mortgages, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Tiptree has an agreement to sell jumbo lender Luxury Mortgage in the second half of this year. The buyer and purchase price weren’t disclosed. Citadel Servicing recently loosened underwriting standards on a number of its nonprime ... [Includes four briefs]

Fannie Mae adjusted its automated underwriting services last summer to make more loans with higher debt-to-income ratios eligible for approval without lenders needing to provide compensating factors.

Housing-finance reform appears to be in the process of a slow death for 2018 partly because of the pending departure of key players.

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson told Congress it would cost approximately $500 million upfront to convert FHA’s archaic information technology systems to a modern technology platform.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency reported this week that the GSEs completed 67,569 foreclosure prevention actions in the fourth quarter of 2017.

Former Fannie Mae executive and critic of the government-sponsored enterprises’ credit-risk transfer programs, Tim Howard, said on his blog this week that CRTs only help “sustain what has become a very profitable program for Wall Street firms and capital market investors.”

Overall production of government-insured loans fell in all three origination channels in the fourth quarter as refinancing continued to decline in 2017. A survey of FHA, VA and rural housing lenders showed originations in retail, correspondent and broker conduits totaled $248.9 billion, down 11.8 percent from 2016. Correspondent production suffered the biggest quarterly decline, 14.9 percent from the third to the fourth quarter. Production in this channel also declined 4.8 percent for the full year. Approximately $139.3 billion of FHA and VA loans came through this channel last year. Notwithstanding the decline, the correspondent share of government-insured lending grew to 56.0 percent in 2017, up from 51.9 percent in 2016. Brokers saw their share of the government-insured market rise to 10.0 percent, even as quarterly and year-over-year originations declined by 2.0 percent and 10.7 percent ,,, [ Charts ]