At the recent invitation-only Ginnie Mae “liquidity summit” in Washington, DC, some of the nation’s top regulators – including one from the Federal Reserve – expressed their concerns about the growing market share of nonbank issuers and servicers. The focus, as might be expected, centered on the capital position of nonbanks, which pales in comparison to depositories. As one attendee told Inside MBS & ABS: “It was all about bashing the nonbanks.” This attendee, who spoke under the condition his name not be used, said...
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 ]
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