Ocwen Financial Corp. is facing more trouble than just its struggle with the CFPB and a number of state regulators. The mortgage lender/servicer also faces the increasing likelihood of some ratings downgrades as well as pending class-action lawsuits. Fitch Ratings recently revised Ocwen’s U.S. residential mortgage-backed securities servicer ratings outlook to negative. “The revision of the rating outlook for the servicer ratings is based on uncertainty surrounding the financial and operational impact of new regulatory actions taken by the CFPB and the multi-state actions following the findings of the Multi-State Mortgage Committee,” Fitch said. The negative rating outlook also takes into consideration Ocwen’s financial condition. Fitch placed the company’s and its corporate parent’s long-term issuer default rating on “rating watch ...
Some in the industry believe the GSE common shares are essentially worthless with the junior preferred falling into the category of being a speculative bet.
Total issuance of agency single-family MBS rose a scant 0.6 percent from March to April, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis and ranking. All of the increase came from Ginnie Mae issuance, which rose 16.1 percent from March, hitting $36.30 billion in April. Things were different for the two government-sponsored enterprises: Fannie Mae saw a 3.4 percent decline from the previous month and Freddie Mac volume was down 13.0 percent. Ginnie fared...[Includes two data tables]
Officials at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and their regulator are encouraged by – but by no means satisfied with – the progress made by the government-sponsored enterprises and their customers at expanding the credit box. “We do see an expansion of credit, steady growth in the 97 percent [loan to value ratio] programs and a little better distribution of credit scores,” said Bob Ryan, special advisor and acting deputy director at the Federal Housing Finance Agency during remarks at the secondary market conference sponsored by the Mortgage Bankers Association in New York this week. “But they are still skewed to the higher end more than in the past.” Fannie and Freddie are trying...
Risk-retention requirements for MBS and ABS have been in effect for over a year, but industry participants are still grappling with how to comply with the standards, according to industry attorneys. Angela Ulum, a partner at the law firm of Mayer Brown, said industry practices and interpretations of the risk-retention requirements are starting to differ among different asset classes. During a webinar hosted by Mayer Brown last week, Ulum noted...
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