At least a dozen or so national lenders – almost all of them nonbanks – have rolled out lending programs for loans that don’t meet the qualified mortgage standard, and none of them expect to issue a mortgage-backed security this year. Moreover, most aren’t so certain they will be able to issue a security next year either, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t thinking about it. New Penn Financial has created...

The Treasury Department will have a key role in developing a $1 billion "test" non-agency security.

Demand in the fixed-income markets for Ginnie Mae securities continues to increase at home and abroad as the program’s deep liquidity and explicit government guaranty draw more investors, according to agency officials and MBS issuers. The relatively high proportion of purchase-money loans and first-time buyers helped Ginnie edge past Freddie Mac in recent months in terms of new issuance, noted John Getchis, head of Ginnie’s Office of Capital Markets, during the Ginnie Mae Summit held in Washington, DC, this week. “We saw...

At the top of the heap was the Federal Reserve, which boosted its agency MBS portfolio by 3.8 percent during the second quarter.

The megabanks also decreased their use of interest rate reductions on loan modifications...

The government-sponsored enterprises plan to expand their risk-sharing activities in a number of ways in 2015, according to officials at the GSEs and the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Kevin Palmer, a vice president of strategic credit costing and structuring at Freddie Mac, said Freddie is set to include a broader group of mortgages in its risk-sharing transactions in an effort to increase the investor base. Fannie has similar plans. The GSEs have issued...

With new issuance faltering in 2014, the net supply of residential MBS in the market declined by 0.3 percent during the second quarter of 2014, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis. MBS outstanding totaled $6.348 trillion at the end of June, wiping out gains made in the second half of last year. It was the lowest MBS outstanding number since 2006. The agency MBS market grew...[Includes three data charts]

In its rebuttal, FHA argues that if the delinquent loans had not been worked out, lenders would have been entitled to $5.2 billion of insurance claims – money the MMIF could ill afford.

The rapid growth of nonbank special servicers since the mortgage crisis has resulted in a concentration of entities controlling the vast majority of loans in need of a work out, which could present some risks for non-agency MBS, according to a report by Fitch Ratings. Fitch cited industry consolidation, increased specialization and regulation as the primary drivers of the concentration shift toward nonbank servicers. “Historically, servicing was concentrated among the largest commercial banks due to their dominant market share in mortgage origination,” the rating service said. “Today, several nonbank servicers have achieved portfolio sizes that have begun to eclipse their banking counterparts.” Fitch noted...

Life for ABS investors got a little easier this week as Morningstar Credit Ratings put out its methodology for U.S. ABS ratings, outlining the principles the firm uses when evaluating, rating and monitoring financial, operating and corporate asset transactions. Morningstar’s analytical framework utilizes seven areas of analysis common to ABS transactions: legal structure, asset quality, transaction structure, credit support, cash flow analysis, originator and servicer quality, and counterparty risk. The analysis begins...