Fannie Mae has been actively buying delinquent mortgages out of MBS trusts and plans to eventually issue securities collateralized by the loans, said Timothy Mayopoulos, CEO of the government-sponsored enterprise. During a recent earnings call and question-and-answer period with the press, the CEO noted that the GSE has bought a “substantial” number of mortgages out of trusts with the goal of making them performing again. “Over the next year or two,” Fannie will...

Disclosure requirements for publicly-registered ABS have prompted fewer investor-friendly changes than might have been expected, according to analysts at Moody’s Investors Service. The Securities and Exchange Commission adopted the so-called Regulation AB2 disclosure rule in August 2014 and a number of issuers have filed Form SF-3 registration statements in compliance with the rule. “Very few issuers have provided additional collateral and/or performance information beyond the data they were already disclosing prior to SF-3 registration statement requirements,” Moody’s said of auto ABS issuers. The rating service said...

The California Supreme Court late last week issued a ruling in a case where a borrower challenged the foreclosure of a loan that was included in a non-agency MBS issued in 2007. The court allowed the borrower’s claims to proceed, which could prompt a significant increase in foreclosure-related litigation for California mortgages in non-agency MBS. An opinion authored by Kathryn Werdegar, an associate justice of the California Supreme Court, stresses that the court’s ruling in Yvanova v. New Century Mortgage is narrow. “We hold only that a borrower who has suffered a non-judicial foreclosure does not lack standing to sue for wrongful foreclosure based on an allegedly void assignment merely because he or she was in default on the loan and was not a party to the challenged assignment,” Werdegar said. The ruling left...

The unexpected decline in mortgage rates this year has moved a significant portion of the agency MBS market into the zone where it’s worthwhile for borrowers to refinance, according to a new analysis of agency MBS data by Inside MBS & ABS. As of the end of December, some 24.4 percent of loans backing Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae MBS had mortgage rates ranging from 4.01 percent to 4.50 percent. Altogether, $1.500 trillion of existing single-family mortgages were in that bucket. According to Inside Mortgage Finance, the average offering rate for 30-year fixed-rate conventional mortgages this week was...[Includes one data table]

The subprime servicing sector is a shell of its former self, with the dollar volume of loans outstanding declining by 75.8 percent in the past nine years, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside Nonconforming Markets. Loans originated during the subprime boom continue to pay off or go through foreclosure while new originations have been few and far between. An estimated $300.0 billion in subprime servicing was ... [Includes one data chart]

Determining a borrower’s ability to repay a bank-statement mortgage is more complicated than evaluating a borrower underwritten with full income documentation, according to a recent report by Moody’s Investors Service. The rating service noted that originations of bank-statement loans tend to be non-qualified mortgages for self-employed borrowers. “The quality of loans originated through bank-statement income documentation programs depends heavily on ...

Major servicers participating in the non-agency portion of the Home Affordable Modification Program have improperly ended mods for a number of borrowers, according to data from the Treasury Department. The Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program is urging the Treasury to take actions to prevent servicers from terminating mods that meet HAMP guidelines. “Treasury’s findings in its on-site visits to the largest seven mortgage servicers in HAMP over ...

One of those GSE watchers is Bose George of Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, who told us: “I see no reason for the administration to negotiate in any meaningful way with the plaintiffs..."

Holdings of subprime and Alt A mortgages by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac continue to decline, though there’s a sharp divergence in terms of the government-sponsored enterprises’ guarantees of nonprime loans and mortgage-backed securities. The GSEs were exposed to a combined $147.34 billion in purchased/guaranteed nonprime mortgages as of the end of 2015, according to an analysis by Inside Nonconforming Markets ... [Includes one data chart]

The FHA in 2015 posted significant shares overall among insured loans, except in purchase mortgages where private mortgage insurance enjoyed a slight edge over government-insured products, according to an Inside FHA/VA Lending analysis of agency loan-level mortgage-backed securities. The FHA accounted for the bulk of insured loans in mortgage-backed securities issued last year, writing coverage on an estimated $236.3 billion in mortgage originations, or 38.8 percent of all insured mortgage loans in 2015. Approximately $608.8 billion in securitized mortgages received...[Includes one data table]