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.

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.

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]

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 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 ...

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 ...

Impac Mortgage Holdings will continue to focus on originating non-qualified mortgages after a change in leadership at the nonbank. Joseph Tomkinson, the longtime chairman and CEO of Impac, is scheduled to step down in July, with George Mangiaracina taking over as CEO. Mangiaracina has been an executive vice president and managing director at Impac since early 2015. Since then, Impac has boosted its non-QM production while focusing on refinances of conforming mortgages ...

Originations of interest-only mortgages declined for many of the major players in the sector in 2017, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside Nonconforming Markets. The declines were well beyond the slowdown in the overall volume of originations seen during the year. Among the top 15 IO lenders, six had lower production volume in 2017, with annual declines ranging from 6.7 percent to 61.1 percent. According to estimates by ... [Includes one data chart]

A subsidiary of Annaly Capital Management plans to issue a non-agency mortgage-backed security with a mix of seasoned mortgages. The $327.16 million OBX 2018-1 Trust will include loans that have seasoned for an average of four years and mortgages that were called from non-agency MBS issued in 2005. The newer loans have a total unpaid principal balance of $121.86 million. Some 11.4 percent of them include interest-only features. Non-qualified mortgages account for ...

Originations of jumbo mortgages declined across the three production channels in 2017, with retail posting the biggest decline, according to an Inside Nonconforming Markets analysis of survey responses to affiliated publication Inside Mortgage Finance. The survey respondents reported $234.21 billion in jumbo originations, down 18.0 percent from 2016, which represented about 79.4 percent of the total jumbo market. Among respondents, retail production ... [Includes one data chart]