As the new breed of subprime lenders continues to increase originations, these firms are now actively pondering whether they should approach the rating agencies about getting their firms rated. Dan Perl, founder and CEO of nonprime/non-QM lender Citadel Servicing, Irvine, CA, said his firm has approached Fitch Ratings and hopes to get rated as both a servicer and originator. Perl believes some of his competitors are going down the same path as well. He told...

Credit Suisse issued two more series of notes this week on its mortgage-lending warehouse securitization offering, according to Moody’s Investors Service. The $1.20 billion in total new issuance from the Wall Street firm followed two notes it issued in August totaling $800 million. As with the August issuance, the new Mortgage Repurchase Agreement Financing Trust, Series 2016-3 and Series 2016-4, received A2 ratings from Moody’s. All of the deals were underwritten by Credit Suisse and HSBC Securities. The transactions are backed...

Money market funds held $114.98 billion of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac paper at the end of the third quarter, including MBS issued by the two government-sponsored enterprises and debt notes. The September figures represented a 5.7 percent increase from the midway point in the year and an 8.8 percent climb from a year ago. Freddie MBS and debt remained more popular, accounting for 60.1 percent of the sector’s GSE holdings. The data are...[Includes one data table]

Over the past couple of weeks, a battle has been brewing over the government’s response to a court order to release dozens of documents regarding the U.S. Treasury’s net worth sweep of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac profits. Plaintiffs in Fairholme Funds Inc. v. United States, et al, filed an emergency enforcement motion arguing that the government is purposely taking too long to produce the documents and requesting unnecessary extensions. Federal Claims Court Judge Margaret Sweeney ordered the Federal Housing Finance Agency and the Treasury to turn over 56 documents to the plaintiff’s attorney, under seal, back in mid-September. The agencies had been...

Ginnie Mae’s decision to change the pooling requirements for streamline refinance loans should boost investor confidence and slow new production of GNMA IIs, Deutsche Bank analysts said. The change could be seen as mildly more restrictive than current pooling standards, particularly having more impact on VA loans, which unlike FHA, have no seasoning requirement to qualify for streamline refinancing, said Jeana Curro, bank research analyst. Under new guidance issued last month, in order to be pooled into standard Ginnie I or Ginnie II multi-issuer pools, streamline refi loans must show...

Goldman Sachs has agreed to pay an undisclosed settlement amount to ACA Financial Guaranty Corp. to resolve allegations of fraud related to insurance on a collateralized debt obligation backed by subprime mortgages. Details of the Abacus CDO settlement were not disclosed, although ACA initially sought $120 million in damages. First filed in 2011, ACA’s lawsuit accused Goldman Sachs and hedge fund Paulson & Co. of fraudulently persuading it to guarantee payments on the CDO prior to the financial crisis. ACA alleged...

In case you didn’t know it, the Irvine, CA-based Citadel now services roughly $650 million in nonprime loans. Angel Oak and Deephaven use subservicers…

The nine major publicly traded nonbanks active in mortgage banking saw a significant improvement in earnings during the third quarter, but two firms continued to book losses, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of quarterly earnings reports. As a group, the nine nonbanks generated $129.7 billion in mortgage-banking income during the third quarter, a major improvement from their combined $339.5 million loss in the previous period ... [Includes one data chart]

PennyMac Financial Services continued to excel in terms of profitability in the third quarter, as officials cited a “distinctive” hedging strategy, among other efforts. PennyMac had $122.3 million in net income in the third quarter of 2016, up 64.6 percent from the previous period and nearly double the net income it reported a year ago. While interest-rate volatility tends to wreak havoc on earnings, Stanford Kurland, PennyMac’s chairman and CEO, said better-than-expected hedging ...

Mortgage lenders delivered a slightly less risky assortment of single-family loans into Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage-backed securities during the third quarter of 2016, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis. Some 11.62 percent of purchase mortgages securitized by the two government-sponsored enterprises had low credit scores and high loan-to-value ratios during the third quarter, down from 11.79 percent in the previous ... [Includes two data charts]