MBS investors this week continued to bid up the price of agency product in the wake of rock-bottom oil prices and economic fears about Asia, Europe and any oil-producing nation that relies too heavily on the energy sector. According to figures compiled by MBS Quoteline, at one point this week investors were paying 105.10 for Fannie Mae MBS with a coupon of 3.5 percent. Back in October the bid on the Fannie 3.5 was a mere 101.83. “Who would pay 105...

Bank of America’s never-ending litigation woes spilled into 2015 as Ambac Assurance hit the bank with a new lawsuit related to toxic mortgages. Credit Suisse and Wells Fargo also welcomed the new year facing MBS lawsuits. According to analysts at Stone Fox Capital, an investment advisory firm, Ambac is claiming $600 million in losses, which arose from insuring approximately $1.7 billion in MBS transactions from 2005 to 2007. The MBS were issued by Countrywide Financial, which BofA acquired in 2008 and has been the principal cause of its legal headaches ever since. Ambac emerged...

Fannie Mae – and perhaps, Freddie Mac – over the past few years have been quietly extending servicing advances to a handful of large nonbank specialty servicers, but it now appears that market might be shifting to Wall Street. Late last month, Green Tree Servicing signed a $1.2 billion servicing advance facility with Barclays Bank, a 12-fold increase from a previous agreement the nonbank had. Barclays is...

The national director of retail sales at a top-20 ranked lender is out in the cold. Details to follow...

The risk-sharing transactions that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac started offering in 2013 have drawn some investors away from buying new jumbo mortgage-backed securities, according to industry participants. The government-sponsored enterprises say the deals that share credit risk with investors help reduce taxpayer risk. However, the returns and risk profile of Freddie’s Structured Agency Credit Risk deals and Fannie’s Connecticut Avenue Securities deals have caused some investors to abandon jumbo MBS and instead invest in the GSEs’ offerings. Aaron Pas, a senior vice president of non-agency portfolio management at American Capital Mortgage Investment, said...

It was the strongest refi volume of the year, and it helped offset a 9.8 percent drop in purchase-mortgage securitization over the same period.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac saw a modest decline in production of new single-family mortgage-backed securities at the end of 2014, but a rally in refinance lending softened the thud. The two government-sponsored enterprises securitized $179.38 billion of single-family MBS during the fourth quarter of last year, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis of loan-level data. That was down 2.1 percent from the third quarter of 2014. But the GSEs securitized...[Includes three data charts]

Ocwen Financial’s massive exit from the agency servicing market is expected to be a multi-year phase-out complicated by its past regulatory problems and a weak market for legacy product, according to industry advisors. If the company follows through on its promise to exit all segments of the agency market – Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae – it will wind up selling a hefty $182.51 billion of residential mortgage servicing rights, based on third quarter survey numbers submitted to Inside Mortgage Finance. At Sept. 30, the nonbank serviced...

President Obama this week announced a substantial price cut in FHA mortgage insurance premiums, although agency officials aren’t sure yet when the change will take effect. The FHA will lower its annual insurance payment from 1.35 percent to 0.85 percent, according to a White House fact sheet released in advance of the president’s speech as Inside Mortgage Finance was going to press late this week. According to the administration, the price cut won’t hurt...

SunTrust Banks started off the new year reliving the pain of the last six years since the financial crisis by revealing it plans to take yet another financial hit – this time, a $145 million legal expense in its fourth quarter results tied to legacy mortgage issues. In a Form 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission early this week, David Wisniewski, deputy general counsel, said the bank was taking the charge “to increase legal reserves and complete the final resolution of one matter. Accordingly, based on current information, the company expects its estimate of reasonably possible losses related to legal matters, in excess of reserves, to decrease by approximately this amount.” Wisniewski did not specify...