Ginnie Mae and the Department of Veterans Affairs have created a joint task force to deal with improper early refinancing of VA loans – a practice the agencies thought they had eliminated but which has reemerged in the last couple of weeks. The task force will be monitoring closely monthly VA refinancing data and will develop additional policies to augment the current policy, which Ginnie, in consultation with the VA, issued last year to curb churning of VA loans in its MBS. Responding to concerns raised by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, acting Ginnie President and Chief Operations Officer Michael Bright acknowledged...

The average daily trading volume in agency MBS totaled a tepid $199.8 billion in August, the lowest reading since May, according to figures compiled by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association. Then again, volume wasn’t too far off trading activity in the prior two months, which came in at $200.5 billion and $200.9 billion. It appears that investors haven’t had...

A former Deutsche Bank employee is at the center of a lawsuit brought by the government over the sale of more than $1 billion of non-agency MBS. It’s rare when the government focuses on an individual for mortgage fraud, but the Department of Justice said the bank’s former head of subprime trading allegedly defrauded investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars. The civil complaint was filed in Brooklyn’s federal court against Paul Mangione for knowingly selling bad subprime mortgages financed during the crisis and misleading investors about loan quality. The complaint alleges that he engaged in fraudulent schemes involving the origination practices of Deutsche Bank’s subsidiary, DB Home Lending LLC, which originated the bulk of the loans. The securities were sold...

Matt Nichols, CEO of Deephaven Mortgage, a company that has issued nonprime MBS in recent years, said the main impediment to nonprime MBS is supply.

In a research note published Friday, Cowen & Co. notes the letter is an indication these groups believe allowing the GSEs to retain capital will prolong the conservatorships.

ATTOM’s Daren Blomquist: “In markets where distressed discounts have largely dried up, flippers are showing more willingness to leverage financing when acquiring properties…”

An impossible scenario, one that keeps Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mel Watt up a night? We shall see...

The wholesale-broker channel accounts for a relatively small amount of new business in the jumbo mortgage market, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of lender surveys. Brokers accounted for just 4.6 percent of jumbo originations during the second quarter of 2017, although volume was up 13.7 percent from the first three months. The problem is that jumbo lending by a diverse sample of mortgage lenders was up 19.9 percent overall, meaning ... [Includes three data charts]

A number of lenders outside of the mortgage market are starting to rely on alternative data to help make underwriting decisions. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is also encouraging use of such alternative data sources, which could prompt adoption by more lenders. Speaking at the ABS East conference produced by Information Management Network this week in Miami Beach, Joanne Gaskin, a senior director at FICO, said some lenders are relying on ...

CMG Mortgage, San Ramon, CA, has launched a new service called HomeFundMe that is geared toward helping loan applicants gather up enough money for a downpayment – using the Internet, of course. There’s a catch though: applicants who use the “crowd funding” platform have to take out a mortgage with CMG, which bears the name of its founder and CEO Chris George. In a recent interview with Inside Mortgage Trends, George was reluctant to estimate how much money ...