A handful of publicly traded real estate investment trusts have been quietly making inquiries about buying residential loans that do not meet the qualified mortgage standard, including subprime credits and even unsecured consumer loans, according to players on both sides of the equation. One executive who manages a REIT that plays in the jumbo market admitted as much in an interview with Inside MBS & ABS, but pointed to one major deterrent: the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. “We’ve tried to get clarifications from them on such things as the ability-to-pay rule, but they haven’t been very helpful,” he said. The source noted that his REIT has so far avoided buying any nonprime, non-QM loans, saying he fears the regulator will ...

Residential mortgages serviced by banks in top foreclosure states are getting hit with higher loss severities than those serviced by nonbanks, largely because banks have so far dealt with more repercussions from regulatory settlements, according to Moody’s Investors Services. Moody’s compared major servicers’ subprime loss severities for loans in the top three foreclo-sure states of Florida, New York and New Jersey, which collectively make up about 42 percent of all subprime mortgages in foreclosure in non-agency RMBS. The rating service found that loss severities on bank-serviced mortgages in Florida averaged 95 percent, versus 81 percent for nonbank-serviced mortgages. Drilling down in the data a bit to review the extremes, on one end of the continuum for banks was CitiMortgage, which ...

Acting on a new policy that increases the focus on prosecuting individuals for corporate wrong-doing, the Department of Justice is reportedly planning to file criminal charges against executives at JPMorgan Chase and the Royal Bank of Scotland for the alleged pre-crisis sale of non-agency MBS to unsuspecting investors, the Wall Street Journal has reported. According to the report, the DOJ investigations were based on documents that allegedly suggested that shortly before the mortgage meltdown, executives at the two financial institutions securitized mortgages and sold them to investors knowing that the underlying loans were defective. The JPMorgan probe began after prosecutors uncovered crucial evidence from a related civil investigation in 2007: a memo from a bank employee cautioning senior executives about ...

Borrowers are increasingly changing the terms for loans backing recently issued commercial MBS shortly after the deal closes, said Fitch Ratings. The rating service said it has received about 15 requests this year for rating confirmations pertaining to loans from 2014 or 2015 vintage deals. While the majority of requests have been loan assumptions by new borrowing entities or ownership structures, a handful have contemplated more fundamental changes to other loan terms. But Fitch said the problem arises when some of the proposed changes would have required that the loan be modeled differently or more conservatively, had it known about the changes prior to issuance. The rating agency is especially concerned about borrowers trying to add more debt. “Additional debt, ...

Fannie Mae has announced the winning bids for its third nonperforming loan sale while Freddie Mac has begun accepting bids for its eighth NPL transaction for 2015. Up for sale in the Fannie Mae deal were approximately 7,000 NPLs totaling $1.24 billion in unpaid principal balance, divided among three pools. The winning bidders in the transaction are Fortress, through its New Residential Investment Corp., for the first and third pools and Goldman Sachs for the second pool. The government-sponsored enterprise announced the sale in October to lighten its inventory of NPLs and manage credit losses on its delinquent loan portfolio. The GSE gave up on the severely delinquent loans after attempts to cure them through loss mitigation failed. Investors and ...

The Structured Finance Industry Group and the Treasury Department continue to work on complementary initiatives to revive the non-agency mortgage-backed security market. SFIG’s upcoming plans include a push for transparency among issuers, while the Treasury has shifted its focus somewhat away from a benchmark non-agency MBS transaction. Eric Kaplan, a managing director at Shellpoint Partners and one of the leaders of SFIG’s RMBS 3.0 effort, said SFIG is ...

The latest developments in the Structured Finance Industry Group’s effort to revive the non-agency MBS market have been met with praise from many industry participants. However, larger issues continue to constrain activity in the market. SFIG recently released a package of model representations and warranties for non-agency MBS. “I think this effort to standardize reps and warrants is a really important step in helping investors get more comfortable with the sector,” Grant Bailey ...

Hatteras Financial is working to issue a jumbo mortgage-backed security backed by adjustable-rate mortgages. The real estate investment trust has acquired more than $275 million in jumbo ARMs since launching its conduit operations last year. The planned jumbo MBS from Hatteras is Onslow Bay Mortgage Loan Trust 2015-1, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission last week. The REIT’s conduit operates as Onslow Bay Financial ...

It may take Ginnie Mae a bit longer than expected to make all the accounting corrections necessary before the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s inspector general to render a clean opinion on the guarantor’s fiscal 2015 financial statement and its restated financials for FY 2014. In fact, Ginnie might have to make some significant long-term investments to address the IG’s accounting concerns, said Thomas Weakland, acting chief financial officer at Ginnie Mae. The agency may have to spend on new technology and infrastructure, and beef up its staff “spanning multiple years” to remediate all of the IG’s concerns, said Weakland. However, Weakland did not state a timeline for making all the necessary corrections and adjustments. Until the IG is fully satisfied with the restatement, it will continue to withhold an audit opinion. “We recognized some of the efforts made and the constraints that ...

Menendez Introduces HAWK Amendment in T-HUD Appropriations Bill. The National Association of Realtors recently sent a thank-you note to Sen. Robert Menendez, D-NJ, for introducing an amendment to H.R. 2577, the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act of 2016, to restore HUD’s authority to offer the Homeowners Armed with Knowledge (HAWK) program. Lawmakers who were concerned about the financial condition of the FHA Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund denied funding for the HAWK program last year in a continuing spending bill, effectively stalling the program for a year. The HAWK program is a key component of the FHA’s Blueprint for Access, which was designed to open up the credit box for underserved borrowers. Specifically, program participants will benefit from reductions in FHA premiums once they complete ...