The new refinance program being developed for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac borrowers with high loan-to-value ratios will not be available for homeowners who have already used the Home Affordable Refinance Program, according to the regulator of the two government-sponsored enterprises. The Federal Housing Finance Agency this year directed Fannie and Freddie to develop a replacement program for HARP, which will sunset at the end of 2016. MBS investors have been concerned...[Includes one data table]
Mortgage securitization made a small comeback in 2015, but softness in the non-agency MBS sector and higher guaranty fees required by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac still played a huge influence in the market, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis. An estimated $1.210 trillion of newly-originated home loans were pooled in mortgage securities last year, representing 69.7 percent of the $1.735 trillion in new first-lien originations. That was up slightly from the 67.8 percent back in 2014, which ranked as the lowest securitization rate since 2004, when just 62.6 percent of new originations were securitized. One issue is...[Includes one data table]
The average daily trading volume in agency MBS climbed to $201.4 billion in February, the best reading in nine months and a sign that investors will still flock to government-backed products in times of uncertainty, especially extreme uncertainty. Late this week, market watchers expressed their concerns about the terrorist bombings in Belgium as well as continued worries about China’s slowing economy and sagging oil prices. In short order, they piled into MBS issued by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae. Barry Habib, who runs MBS Highway, a rate-lock service, told...
This week, the Supreme Court of the United States invited the U.S. Solicitor General to file a brief “expressing the views of the United States” in the Madden v. Midland Funding case, indicating the court is seriously considering taking the case. Assuming the Solicitor General obliges the high court, attorneys at the Pepper Hamilton law firm believe the brief likely will articulate the views of the primary banking agencies on whether SCOTUS should grant certiorari, along with their relative positions on the issues in the case. Madden involves...
Five mortgage industry veterans – including two who worked in the Obama White House – this week floated a new plan aimed at preserving the government guaranty on conventional MBS and ending, once and for all, the uncertainly plaguing the secondary market. In a new white paper entitled “A More Promising Road to GSE Reform,” the authors aim to preserve the government-backed MBS market while merging Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into a new institution called the National Mortgage Reinsurance Corp. But the proposal might be...
Originating non-qualified mortgages remains a niche market. According to a recent survey of 200 lenders conducted by Lenders One, 64 percent of survey respondents say they originate non-QMs, though only 18 percent of the total respondents frequently originate the loans. Many of the lenders appear to be offering non-QMs to prime borrowers, with nonprime non-QMs much less common. Impac Mortgage Holdings is one of the most prominent lenders offering non-QMs ...
Originations of non-qualified mortgages remain suppressed and industry participants are divided on prospects for volume going forward. “We thought there would be significant non-QM activity by now,” said Chris Haspel, a director at Promontory Financial Group. He was speaking at the recent ABS Vegas conference produced by Information Management Network and the Structured Finance Industry Group. Haspel was a senior adviser for residential mortgage servicing and ...
CORRECTION: An update to a story in the March 11 issue of Inside Nonconforming Markets with the headline “Banks’ First-Lien Holdings Increase in 2015” is available at http://www.insidemortgagefinance.com. The story and accompanying ranking were revised because the ranking initially showed numbers from the second quarter of 2015 for the fourth quarter of 2014. Five Oaks Investment said it recently determined ... [Includes five briefs]
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