Freddie Mac CEO Donald Layton said in a phone interview with Inside The GSEs last week that the phrase “front-end risk sharing” is not well understood. He said almost all of the credit-risk transfer transactions can be referred to as front end because the terms are front end. “The risk-transfer mechanism is back end, the risk-transfer arrangement is front end,” he said. “If the loan comes to us and is put in one of our mortgage-backed securities, it is in fact a back-end risk transfer,” he said, explaining that if the loan goes bad the owner of the MBS takes the loss and looks to...

The poor stock performance of this group has bloodied the water for mortgage IPOs...

Accelerated growth through the acquisition of mortgage servicing rights is an undertaking that remains challenging to the industry, said the MMC…

Real estate investment trusts that specialize in the residential MBS market held $232.44 billion of agency and non-agency MBS at the end of March, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis. The MBS holdings of 16 top mortgage REITs were down 0.3 percent from the fourth quarter and off 11.9 percent from March 2015. However, several REITs boosted their positions during early 2016 and the industry is slated to see a major merger of two firms ... [Includes one data chart]

Issuance of jumbo MBS has fallen off since mortgage disclosure requirements set by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau took effect in October. While the slowdown in jumbo MBS issuance has been blamed on TRID, there still appears to be plenty of demand from secondary market investors for jumbo whole loans. Redwood Trust’s jumbo origination and sales volume has been humming along without much impact from the CFPB’s combined Truth in Lending Act and ...

Draft standards proposed by the Structured Finance Industry Group to address TRID mortgage disclosure issues adequately address the risks posed to non-agency MBS, according to Moody’s Investors Service. The rating service published a detailed analysis of SFIG’s draft proposal this week. On March 18, SFIG proposed a draft standardized approach to the scope of review for exceptions to the combined Truth in Lending Act and Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act ...

The track record of U.S. re-performing loan MBS transactions rated by Fitch Ratings is pretty much what the ratings service expected, and somewhat better than other deals that were not rated, analysts at Fitch said in a new report. “While still very early, the rated transactions issued since 2014 have performed within initial expectations, reflecting positive selection of the borrowers included in the mortgage pools, extensive up-front diligence and supportive transaction structures,” ...

Over the past five years, the issuance market for securitization has fluctuated between feast and famine, noted one executive…

Marketplace lender Social Finance this month received seller/servicer approvals from Fannie Mae, but it remains to be seen just how active it will be in the secondary mortgage market. According to a spokesman for the privately held “SoFi,” the nonbank is now funding roughly $100 million per month in non-agency jumbos. According to firms that have done business with SoFi, it has sold the loans to OneWest Bank and Wells Fargo. To date, the online lender has yet to issue any ...

Today’s reduced liquidity is here to stay because of increased regulation and the unprecedented dominance of the Federal Reserve in the agency MBS market, said the Urban Institute. The top five dealers were responsible for about 55 percent of agency-MBS transactions in 2006, but today’s top five account for approximately 80 percent, Urban Institute analysts said. According to Inside MBS & ABS estimates, the Fed held 27.3 percent of outstanding agency single-family MBS ...