The nation’s largest MBS-investing real estate investment trust, Annaly Capital Management, this week agreed to buy the third largest player in the market, setting off speculation among analysts and investors that the “mREIT” sector could be in for a healthy dose of consolidation. The New York-based Annaly said it would buy Hatteras Financial Corp., Winston-Salem, NC, for roughly $1.5 billion in cash and stock. At year end, Annaly ranked...
The Federal Housing Finance Agency this week announced a limited principal reduction option for certain nonperforming, underwater borrowers with Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac home mortgages. The agency characterized the program as the “final crisis-era modification program [and] a last chance for seriously delinquent underwater borrowers to avoid foreclosure.” The program is limited...
With Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac doing only surface checks for TRID regulatory compliance and not complete reviews, future credit-risk transfer deals from the two government-sponsored enterprises could be at risk from lender compliance violations, according to Moody’s Investors Service. Numerous challenges have arisen in the non-agency secondary market because of concerns about liability for errors in the new mortgage disclosures. But since TRID became effective on Oct. 3, 2015, Fannie and Freddie are only checking to make sure that the correct forms are being used. This lack of diligence for TRID violations may amount...
Overall net losses in subprime auto ABS are on the rise due to an increasing number of deals from smaller lenders that cater to borrowers with weak credit. Amid this trend, however, subprime auto ABS performance varies by lender, according to a new report from Moody’s Investors Service. Moody’s analysts said competition among auto lenders has tightened as new, mostly smaller, lenders – driven by low losses on post-crisis auto loans and low interest rates – enter the market and compete for borrowers. The crowded market has driven...
Republican and Democrat members of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee were at odds during a hearing this week over whether there is much of a liquidity problem in the fixed-income markets today, and if so, to what extent the Dodd-Frank Act or Federal Reserve monetary policy may be responsible. Federal regulators, on the other hand, told the lawmakers that markets are functioning well enough and still evolving in a new, post-crisis environment. They suggested the thing to worry about is how much liquidity there will be in five or 10 years and how it will function. Sen. Dean Heller, R-NV, asked...
More loans securitized by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae are carrying mortgage insurance, either private MI or coverage through government-insured programs, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of mortgage-backed securities data. The trend toward more insured loans has been gradual over the past two years. In 2014, purchase-money loans with no mortgage insurance accounted for 39.9 percent of new MBS issued by ... [Includes one data chart]
Fannie Mae did a slightly better job than Freddie Mac in fending off the seasonal slump in new single-family mortgage business during the first quarter of 2016, according to a new analysis and ranking by Inside The GSEs. A stiff 11.6 percent decline in purchase-mortgage business was the major reason why total GSE production of single-family mortgage-backed securities fell 3.4 percent from the fourth quarter of 2015. Fannie and Freddie securitized $90.18 billion of refinance loans during the first three months of the year, a 1.8 percent uptick. Freddie’s total business was down 4.6 percent from the fourth quarter, while Fannie’s was off 2.5 percent. It was Fannie that boosted its refi production, by 3...
The Federal Housing Finance Agency decided to roll out a principal reduction plan for certain Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans as its last post-crisis effort to help struggling borrowers. It estimates that 33,000 homeowners could benefit from the program that will expire at yearend.The plan was given the go-ahead this week by FHFA Director Mel Watt, after a multi-year analysis by the agency. The FHFA said the program will provide seriously delinquent borrowers a final opportunity to address negative equity, avoid foreclosure and help stabilize neighborhoods that have not recovered from the foreclosure crisis. According to a press statement on the effort, only a select group of troubled borrowers will be...
Three megabanks – Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America – posted modestly lower originations in the first quarter of 2016, thanks in part to seasonality as well as continuing their cautious behavior of sticking to bread-and-butter conventional lending. In their just-released earnings reports, there was no mention of production problems tied to the controversial integrated-disclosure rule known as TRID. Then again, given their size and the fact that they’re ...
RSS