Democrats and Republicans in Congress want to know what it will take to expand real estate investment trust participation in GSE credit risk transfers. They wrote the Securities and Exchange Commission last week asking it to help alleviate the regulatory challenges REITs face when it comes to participating in credit risk transfers. “Specifically, we are requesting your expertise in unlocking a meaningful amount of capital in the form of mortgage real estate investment trusts to participate in these transactions,” said the letter from the 13 congressman.They cited the FHFA’s goal to grow the credit risk-sharing program with an expanded investor base and said that mortgage REITs would be a likely candidate if the obstacles were removed.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been targeting a portion of their nonperforming loans to nonprofit organizations, but reaching those groups can be a challenge. So far, each has sold one pool to two different nonprofit groups in New Jersey. Freddie Mac announced its very first NPL sale to a nonprofit buyer back in late December. It sold $18.4 million in loans to the Community Loan Fund of New Jersey, a non-profit, private and minority and women-owned business. There were 103 loans in the Florida-based pool with an average balance of $178,300 and they were about 33 months delinquent on average. The transaction is expected to settle in February.

FHFA FHLB Classification Guidance. The Federal Housing Finance Agency put out guidance this week on the classification of investment securities at the Federal Home Loan Banks. It is adopting the 2013 Uniform Agreement for FHLBank supervisory purposes. Where FHFA’s rule and guidance and the 2013 Uniform Agreement may conflict, the FHFA said its rules and guidance will apply. The agreement included FHLBanks using sound and conservative assumptions as they pertain to upgrades and it provides classification approach examples that provide boundaries for upgrading classified securities. Freddie Prices $1 Billion STACR Offering. As the first out of eight Structured Agency Credit Risk offerings planned through October 2016, Freddie Mac...

A group of five large banks posted a 7.5 percent increase in mortgage-banking income in 2015 compared with the previous year, according to a new analysis by Inside Mortgage Trends. Officials at the banks pointed to a stronger housing market along with reduced servicing costs. Wells Fargo continued to lead the industry in terms of both mortgage-banking income and originations at the end of 2015. The bank had $6.50 billion in mortgage-banking income during the year ...

An estimated $254.15 billion of agency mortgage servicing rights were transferred in bulk sales transactions last year, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of loan-level mortgage-backed securities disclosures. The peak of the market came during the second quarter of 2015, when a whopping $102.27 billion of MSR were transferred to new servicers. Some $61.80 billion of that was in the Ginnie Mae program, with Bank of America ... [Includes one data chart]

The portion of the homeowner population that is capable of benefitting from refinancing their mortgages is shrinking, and could continue to shrivel if mortgage rates rise along with interest rate increases from the Federal Reserve. But the good news is that rates have actually been falling of late as investors around the world seek the stability of U.S. dollar-dominated assets, so that slice of the refi pie could actually grow if the present market turmoil continues. “Looking at current interest rates ...

With oil prices hitting multiyear lows this week, now might seem like a good time for residential lenders to tighten up underwriting standards in oil-producing states such as Alaska, Oklahoma, North Dakota and Texas. But so far, lending executives hardly seem worried. Jim Picard, vice president at Denali Home Loans in Alaska, said the state has suffered some job losses in oil “but we’re still at full employment.” He noted that energy jobs are a small part of Alaska’s economy ...

In the aftermath of the financial crisis, mortgage originations recovered more slowly in areas where market share was concentrated among fewer lenders, according to a new study by Adonis Antoniades. The author is an economist in the monetary and economic department of the Bank for International Settlements. Antoniades used data from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act to study loan applications, originations and lenders’ market share on a county-by-county level from 2006 through 2011 ...

Social Finance Inc.’s recent decision to stop using FICO scores when evaluating an applicant’s ability to repay a mortgage suggests that alternatives to the traditional credit-scoring model are catching hold. On Jan. 12, 2016, SoFi, a San Francisco-based online nonbank lender, announced it is no longer going to use FICO scores, which for years have been the basis for the origination of trillions of dollars in mortgage and consumer loans in the U.S. SoFi will still take into account ...

Correspondent originators and mortgage brokers continued to churn out relatively more purchase mortgages than retail lenders during the fourth quarter of 2015, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of agency loan-level data. Some 34.6 percent of single-family loans securitized by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae during the final three months of last year were originated by correspondent lenders. And 69.1 percent of those loans ... [Includes one data chart]