Even due diligence firms such as Allonhill LLC of Denver have trimmed staff because their bank clients no longer need to conduct as many forensic reviews on legacy loan files. Allonhill was recently sold to Stewart Title, which hopes to grow the firm’s presence in the jumbo and nonconforming sectors.
Mortgage banking officials tracking the issue believe that if the agency is going to lower Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac loan limits for 2014 it will need to codify those changes by mid- to late October to give lenders time to update their technology systems.
Seven different issuers generated a relatively strong $3.94 billion in jumbo non-agency MBS during the third quarter, but the sector’s resurgence in 2013 seemed to be losing steam and faces an uncertain future. Jumbo MBS issuance declined 9.1 percent from the second quarter and one transaction – Shellpoint’s second of the year – was pulled back as September came to a close. Redwood Trust managed $1.18 billion in new issuance, a 34.1 percent drop from the second quarter, while the two other jumbo veterans, Credit Suisse and JPMorgan Chase, saw reduced production as well. Industry participants are divided...[Includes three data charts]
Officials at Fannie Mae said they learned from Freddie Mac when structuring their pending risk-sharing transaction, including getting the deal rated. Investors are generally impressed with the transactions and look forward to more. Fannie’s Connecticut Avenue Securities Series 2013-C01 is scheduled to close on Oct. 24, according to a presale report released late last week by Fitch Ratings. The higher of the two tranches offered for sale is set to receive a BBB- rating, the lowest investment grade rating available. Speaking at the ABS East conference produced by Information Management Network this week in Miami, Laurel Davis, a vice president at Fannie Mae, said...
Investors at the ABS East conference in Miami this week had a positive outlook for most structured finance investment options, such as vintage non-agency MBS, auto and credit card ABS, collateralized loan obligations and esoteric assets. They were less bullish about new jumbo MBS. More than 3,500 people registered for the conference this year including more than 1,000 investors. Jade Friedensohn, a senior vice president at Information Management Network, the event sponsor, said it was the biggest turnout for ABS East since before the financial crisis. “In the short term things are...
Ginnie Mae this week acted quickly to dispel rumors of a plan to sunset the agency’s single-issuer MBS program, saying the report was nothing but unwarranted speculation. Agency officials assured participants during a Ginnie issuer and investor symposium in Austin, TX, earlier this month that the reports were untrue. The false buzz spooked the markets early this week, causing price spreads between Ginnie Mae I and II programs to narrow, officials acknowledged. In an Oct. 7 memo to program participants, Ginnie Mae clarified...
It’s not every day that a stock comes public at $20 a share, falls 7 percent on its first day of trading and then continues to drift downward. Then again, if that stock is a mortgage investing real estate investment trust like Cherry Hill Mortgage Investment Corp., it’s no big surprise. Thanks to rising interest rates – which actually have been in decline during the government shutdown and uncertainty over the U.S. debt ceiling – mortgage REITs have been battered in the market. Cherry Hill, a spin-off of Freedom Mortgage of Mt. Laurel, NJ, went...
The nation’s top court this week may have sent a subtle hint to the more than dozen big bank defendants being sued by the Federal Housing Finance Agency when it flatly declined to receive their petition to dismiss their cases, notes a legal expert. The 13 financial institutions – including Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase – sought to argue before the Supreme Court of the United States that the FHFA waited too long when it filed suit against the banks in 2011 over non-agency MBS the government-sponsored enterprises purchased prior to the 2008 financial crisis. SCOTUS said...
If the mortgage reform legislation drafted by Sens. Bob Corker, R-TN, and Mark Warner, D-VA, becomes law, the mortgage market would be reconstituted in such a way that the nation’s largest banks could dominate the MBS market, according to the Community Mortgage Lenders of America. The CMLA, which represents small- to mid-sized residential lenders, isn’t entirely enthralled with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac either, but according to a recent letter sent to the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, it fears that “too big to fail” banks could prove an even greater danger. The correspondence notes...
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