Foreign investors, commercial banks and mutual funds all beefed up their holdings of agency MBS during the second quarter of 2016, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis. The Federal Reserve remained the biggest investor in the agency MBS market with $1.744 trillion on its books at the end of June. That accounted for 29.7 percent of the $5.867 trillion of single-family agency MBS outstanding at that time, but it was down 0.5 percent from the end of March. The central bank’s MBS holdings vary slightly in the Fed’s weekly snapshots as pending transactions wait to clear, but its game plan is to hold its portfolio steady by reinvesting principal payments. The single-family agency MBS market grew...[Includes two data tables]
Would-be homebuyers are hesitant to take the plunge thanks to downpayment misconceptions, according to the National Association of Realtors. In NAR’s third-quarter survey of more than 2,500 consumers, many reported that they were not aware of the low downpayment mortgage options in the market today. This was true across all income and education brackets. The downpayment confusion was...
Freddie Mac is partnering with two lenders for a mortgage pilot program that will consider a wider range of underwriting criteria, including income from seasonal work, to help promote homeownership in diverse communities. The pilot, based on certain borrower characteristics, was launched with New American Funding, headquartered in Dallas, and Las Vegas-based Alterra Home Loans. It was announced this week during the national convention of the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals. The NAHREP said the narrow definitions of creditworthiness make it especially difficult for minority and first-time borrowers to qualify for and obtain a mortgage. The two nonbank lenders, which specialize in serving the Hispanic community and low-income borrowers, will build...
Some residential mortgage-backed securities loan originators are moving away from performing internal post-acquisition quality control loan reviews in lieu of obtaining feedback from their whole loan investors, according to a new report from Moody’s Investors Service. “Some aggregators are relying more on their investors for quality control feedback,” said Moody’s. The ratings service identified in particular Redwood Residential Acquisition Corp. and JPMorgan Mortgage Acquisition Corp., which it said “are relying more on feedback from whole loan investors to monitor the quality of due diligence firm loan reviews, as opposed to conducting their own internal reviews, since a large portion of their acquisitions are sold in whole-loan trades.” Moody’s noted...
An increasing share of purchase mortgages have missed their scheduled closing dates in recent months, according to the latest Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance HousingPulse Tracking Survey. Many of the delays are tied to a shortage of appraisers as home sale activity increased during the spring and summer. Just before the start of the spring home-buying season, the on-time share of closings was at high levels for mortgage-financed purchases. Some 76.6 percent of purchases in April with a low downpayment mortgage securitized by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac closed on time, based on a three-month moving average. The on-time closing share has declined...
Impac Mortgage Holdings late last week came to market with a “follow-on” offering of 3 million shares of common stock, the first public equity sale by a pure-play mortgage company in almost three years. Unfortunately, investors were not happy. When the shares hit the New York Stock Exchange last Friday, not only did Impac’s stock price tumble almost 9.0 percent, but it has continued to drift downward, resting at just over $13.00 a share as Inside Mortgage Finance went to press this week. The share price of the nation’s 28th largest originator hit...
Meanwhile, if you want to know where Clinton and Trump stand on the issue of homeownership in America, you can review their respective party platforms...
Thanks to booming originations the past few months – which should translate into higher guaranty fee income – Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are likely to post their strongest profits of the year in the third quarter, according to interviews conducted by Inside Mortgage Finance this week. But it’s not just higher loan production that should allow profits to soar – it’s the fact that the yield on the 10-year Treasury now stands at 1.69 percent, 21 basis points higher than June 30. The 10-year rate is...
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