Caliber Home Loans is touting its non-agency product line as a way to provide mortgages to borrowers with less-than-pristine credit who cannot qualify for conforming loans. The nonbank is backed by Loan Star Funds, which has raised more than $1.0 billion for funding non-agency mortgages, according to William Pendleton, senior vice president of portfolio lending at Caliber. “We believe we are in the best position of all major lenders to remain on the cutting edge of product ...
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a final rule this week that will significantly expand the data collected under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. Many of the newly required data fields are aimed at giving federal regulators better information regarding discriminatory lending practices. The reporting requirements will start to take effect at the beginning of 2018. Among the new fields required to be reported under HMDA are credit scores, debt-to-income ratios ...
Fitch Ratings placed a negative outlook on a number of servicer ratings for Caliber Home Loans this week. The rating service said the revision from a stable outlook was due to “rapid growth and heightened regulatory scrutiny.” Caliber was the 19th-ranked servicer as of the end of the second quarter of 2015, according to affiliated publication Inside Mortgage Finance. The nonbank handled a $75.23 billion portfolio, which increased by 27.1 percent compared with ...
Access to advances from the Federal Home Loan Banks have helped Redwood Trust operate its jumbo conduit, including adding to portfolio capabilities, according to officials at the real estate investment trust. Like other REITs, Redwood gained access to FHLBank advances via a captive insurance subsidiary. RWT Financial was approved as a member of the FHLBank of Chicago in the second quarter of 2014. In July, the FHLBank advance financing capacity for Redwood’s subsidiary increased by $400 million to $1.4 billion. “We’ve been able to more efficiently finance
With action from Congress to reform the government-sponsored enterprises not expected in the next year and a half, the GSEs’ risk-sharing activities have been seen by some as a de facto housing finance reform program. Industry participants and members of Congress suggest that the risk-sharing initiatives aren’t a replacement for GSE reform, even while calling for adjustments to the programs. Kevin Chavers, a managing director at BlackRock, said the back-end ...
Rep. Andy Barr, R-KY, used a recent hearing by the House Financial Services Committee as an opportunity to promote a bill that would grant qualified mortgage status to loans held in portfolio. He was particularly critical of an exemption in QM standards that currently applies to mortgages eligible for purchase by the government-sponsored enterprises. Such loans can have debt-to-income ratios above 43 percent and still be deemed safe-harbor QMs. “The policy is counterproductive ...
A company that helped Ocwen Financial reduce the capital it needed for servicing non-agency mortgages was fined last week by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The federal regulator charged Home Loan Servicing Solutions for misstatements and inadequate internal controls. HLSS agreed to pay a $1.5 million penalty to settle the charges while not admitting to or denying the findings. The SEC noted that William Erbey, Ocwen’s former executive chairman ...
The IRS approved Bank of America’s $8.5 billion settlement involving vintage non-agency mortgage-backed securities this week. The approval paves the way for investors to receive funds from a settlement that was announced in 2011. Mortgages play a role in a dispute between a former internal auditor at BofI Holding and the bank. Matt Erhart, the former auditor, filed a federal lawsuit this week with a wide range of allegations, including that BofI ... [Includes two briefs]
Nonbanks comprised a significant portion of Ginnie Mae business as independent mortgage companies replaced banks as primary securitizers of FHA and VA loans. In the third quarter of 2015, mortgage companies accounted for 60.8 percent of VA loans and 67.1 percent of FHA loans securitized in Ginnie pools. For mortgage companies, production of Ginnie mortgage-backed securities backed by FHA loans increased by 5.0 percent in the third quarter from the previous quarter and was up a whopping 118.1 percent during the first nine months of 2015 over the same period last year. Nonbank securitization of VA loans rose by a modest 1.5 percent quarter over quarter and by 83.6 percent over the nine-month period compared to the same period last year. Megabanks, whose assets exceed $1 trillion, were the second largest issuers of Ginnie Mae MBS, accounting for less than ... [3 charts]
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