The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is considering revising income documentation standards to help borrowers that have nontraditional sources of income, according to Richard Cordray, the director of the agency. At a hearing last week by the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, Sen. Mark Warner, D-VA, raised concerns about the income documentation standards included in Appendix Q of the CFPB’s ability-to-repay rule. Non-agency lenders ...
Industry participants largely support a plan from the Federal Housing Finance Agency for adjustments to the conforming loan limit. The $417,000 loan limit applicable to the government-sponsored enterprises could be increased as soon as January, depending on house-price appreciation trends over the next few months. The FHFA’s proposal said the regulator planned to use the “expanded data” house price index that the agency has published since 2011 to ...
United Wholesale Mortgage announced this week that it’s offering interest-only mortgages, joining a growing number of banks and nonbanks originating the loans that don’t meet standards for qualified mortgages. Officials at United Wholesale noted a distinction in the lender’s IO product: “Large banking institutions have widely offered this option, but mostly restricted its availability to jumbo borrowers,” United Wholesale said. The lender is offering IOs with ...
Freddie Mac priced a risk-sharing transaction this week that’s structured much like a non-agency jumbo mortgage-backed security that has the advantage of the government-sponsored enterprise’s guaranty and oversight of servicing practices. Freddie Mac Whole Loan Securities Trust, Series 2015 SC01, will include $278 million in senior certificates guaranteed by Freddie and approximately $23 million in unguaranteed subordinate certificates. The deal is backed by ...
Banks with significant portfolio capacity continue to stock up on mortgages because they offer strong returns and can help efforts to cross-sell other products. While most of the mortgages being added to portfolios are jumbos, in some instances banks are retaining conventional mortgages. JPMorgan Chase reported that it added mortgages with a balance of $19.0 billion to its portfolio holdings during the second quarter of 2015. Marianne Lake, chief financial officer at the bank ...
Some industry officials, including Marc Savitt, president of the National Association of Independent Housing Professionals, are worried about the methodology of the project...
Market factors are more favorably disposed toward non-agency MBS in the second half of the year than for agency bonds, according to a mid-year review and outlook from Deutsche Bank. “For the second half of 2015, we are cautiously optimistic for the non-agency MBS market, given the favorable fundamentals and technicals,” said Deutsche Bank analysts, who expect home price appreciation and servicer practices to continue to be the two biggest drivers of the MBS credit. On the technical front, the most important factor that affected legacy RMBS is...
With bond prices expected to fall further and interest rates headed north, analysts who cover mortgage-investing real estate investment trusts are sharpening their knives on the sector. The general consensus is that share prices are going nowhere fast and returns are no longer attractive. A new report on mortgage REITs from Keefe, Bruyette & Woods doesn’t mince words: “Sentiment on the mREIT sector remains pretty poor, and we don’t anticipate 2Q15 results to do much to improve that. We’re not expecting a horrible quarter, but we anticipate slight disappointment along more or less all relevant dimensions.” Although many mortgage REITs have yet to report second-quarter earnings, the early expectations are...
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