The Securities and Exchange Commission’s recent $12.7 million settlement with First Mortgage Corp. and several of its top executives over an allegedly fraudulent sale of toxic MBS to investors reveals the agency’s hidden role as a regulator of Ginnie Mae issuers, attorneys at Mayer Brown warned. Though seldom in the news, the SEC continues to bring enforcement actions against public companies that commit fraud involving Ginnie MBS, as seen in the FMC case, and previous enforcement actions against Taylor Bean & Whitaker and Radius Capital, the attorneys noted in a recent analysis. When bringing these cases, the SEC seeks...
As Tim Rood of The Collingwood Group noted: An investor can buy a mortgage at 65 cents on the dollar, “notify the borrower they are eligible for a note mod down to 80 cents on the dollar and voila!”
Upgrades of ratings on structured finance products hit an all-time high in 2015, according to a study released this week by S&P Global Ratings. The study tracked ratings across sectors and the world, while the U.S. residential MBS sector showed mixed performance. S&P said it had 30,359 ratings outstanding on global structured finance securities at the beginning of 2015. During the year, 9.8 percent of the ratings were upgraded. The rating service said upgrades in 2015 were most prevalent on structured credit deals in Europe and the U.S. Some 11.2 percent of S&P’s ratings were downgraded...
Ginnie Mae has good reason to be concerned about rapid demographic change in its relatively small issuer community. Nonbank institutions – many of them relatively newly formed and based on nontraditional business models – are taking over the market. Nonbank issuers accounted for a whopping 69.4 percent of Ginnie’s issuance of single-family mortgage-backed securities during the first quarter of 2016. A year ago, their share was 64.6 percent. Two years ago it was 46.7 percent. With those kinds of gains on the production line, it’s not hard to see why nonbanks are claiming a growing share of Ginnie servicing outstanding. At the end of March, nonbanks owned 46.7 percent of Ginnie single-family mortgage servicing rights, up a hefty 11.5 percentage points in one year. That rate of growth can’t be accomplished just by producing new MBS because the servicing market simply doesn’t grow that fast. (Although the Ginnie market has grown significantly faster than any other segment of ... [ 2 charts ]
Investors in FHA’s distressed note sales program would be required to do more for homeowners to help them avoid foreclosure and keep their homes, thanks to improvements to FHA’s Distressed Asset Stabilization Program (DASP) announced this week by the agency. The changes appear aimed at consumer groups’ criticism of the Department of Housing and Urban Development for allowing profit-oriented investors to purchase the troubled HUD assets at a discount and flip the homes for a profit without ever helping the distressed homeowner. Although the transactions make good economic sense for investors and the government, struggling homeowners end up losing their homes without having tried any loan modification option that could have helped them avoid foreclosure. HUD launched the DASP in 2010 under pressure from Congress to help stabilize the FHA’s Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund, which ...
VA home loan guarantees reported modest growth in the first quarter of 2016 thanks to the program’s no-downpayment feature and higher-quality borrowers, according to Inside FHA/VA Lending’s analysis of agency data. The fourth quarter of 2015 was the worst quarter in an otherwise good year for VA lending, as lenders racked up $35.2 billion in total originations, down 21.0 percent from the third quarter, which was VA’s most productive for the year. However, the first three months of 2016 are off to a promising start with overall VA volume totaling $37.1 billion, a 5.5 percent improvement from the prior quarter. VA purchase volume was down 8.1 percent in the first quarter to $18.2 billion from the previous quarter, while VA IRRRL (interest rate reduction refinance loans) production rose 43.4 percent to $10.9 billion over the same period, data further showed. VA’s no-downpayment option in conjunction with the ... [ 1 chart ]
FHA condominium lending fell in the first quarter to $1.6 billion, down 8.6 percent from the prior quarter. The volume decline was the second in a row for the sector, when production fell 20.3 percent from the third to the fourth quarter last year. On the other hand, year-over-year volume saw a whopping 35.3 percent increase. The top 10 FHA condo lenders were dominated by nonbanks, with Quicken Loans leading the field. The only bank among the top 10 was Wells Fargo, which landed in third place with $45.3 million despite a 35.7 percent drop in condo loan originations in the first quarter. Leader Quicken Loans closed the quarter with $73.6 million, while second-ranked Freedom Mortgage Corp. clocked in with $55.6 million. Fourth-place LoanDepot originated $33.7 million in FHA condo loans, while Broker Solutions rounded out the top five category with $31.1 million. In November last year, FHA announced ... [ 1 chart ]
The FHA’s 203(k) Property Repair and Rehabilitation program could use some jolt as inflexible agency guidelines, construction inexperience and closing delays continue to constrain loan growth. Origination of FHA-insured fixer-upper loans fell 10.9 percent in the first quarter of 2016 to $762.7 million from $856.2 million in the previous quarter. It was a different story year-over-year, however, as volume during the first three months rose 20.8 percent compared to volume during the same period last year. The top five FHA 203(k) lenders struggled as their combined loan production dropped 9.4 percent quarter-over-quarter and by 3.0 percent on a year-to-year basis. Their combined originations accounted for $157.5 million of total FHA 203(k) loan production for the first quarter. Purchase loans accounted for $131.0 million of rehab loans originated during the period while refinance loans totaled a ... [ 1 chart ]
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