A Manhattan district court judge last week dismissed lawsuits brought by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. against three large banks, saying the agency no longer has standing to sue after it sold the defective mortgages through a re-securitization transaction. Judge Andrew Carter of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York threw out the government’s suits against Citigroup, Bank of New York Mellon and U.S. Bancorp, which accused the banks of failing as trustees to ensure the quality of $2.7 billion in MBS purchased by the failed Texas-based Guaranty Bank. Reuters was the first to report Carter’s decision. Guaranty went...
The Milken Institute suggests simply amending the charters of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Ginnie Mae and the Federal Housing Finance Agency for a smooth transition toward a new secondary mortgage market. Those changes include turning the government-sponsored enterprises into mutuals owned and operated by their seller-servicers and making Ginnie Mae a stand-alone government corporation. Amending the charters could accomplish a wide range of objectives that have eluded legislators and policymakers since the conservatorships, the authors said. Michael Bright, director in the Milken Institute’s Center for Financial Markets, and Ed DeMarco, senior fellow at the institute and former FHFA acting director, said...
JPMorgan Chase and Redwood Trust remained the only two active issuers of prime non-agency mortgage-backed securities as of the end of the third quarter of 2016, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside Nonconforming Markets. A total of $4.07 billion in prime non-agency MBS was issued during the third quarter of 2016, more than five times the volume issued in the previous quarter. However, through three quarters this year, prime MBS issuance ... [Includes one data chart]
The sample deal-agent agreement released by non-agency industry participants in September aims to provide a template for a third party that would protect investors in future non-agency mortgage-backed securities. Some industry participants warn that there are still more issues that need to be addressed, including a potential overlap in the duties for a deal agent and tasks traditionally handled by trustees and master servicers. At the recent ABS East conference produced by ...
Some $41.77 billion in higher-priced mortgages were sold in 2015, down 19.9 percent from 2014, according to an Inside Nonconforming Markets analysis of recently released data under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. Their share of total loan sales also decreased in 2015 to 3.3 percent. Higher-priced mortgages are sometimes seen as a proxy for nonprime mortgages. First-lien higher-priced mortgages are defined as loans with an ... [Includes one data chart]
The Structured Finance Industry Group is preparing to publish standards that aim to increase transparency for representations and warranties on new non-agency mortgage-backed securities, according to officials at the trade group. Eric Kaplan, a managing partner at Ranieri Strategies, said SFIG will release one or two “green papers” this year as part of the group’s RMBS 3.0 effort to revive issuance of non-agency MBS. He said the next green paper from SFIG will ... [Includes two briefs]
Ginnie Mae rode a surging purchase-mortgage market and heavy refinance activity to new production records during the third quarter of 2016. The agency issued a whopping $145.14 billion of single-family mortgage-backed securities during the third quarter, according to an Inside FHA/VA Lending analysis of MBS disclosures. That figure is based on pool-level disclosures that reveal exact principal balance amounts and it includes securities backed by FHA home-equity conversion mortgages. The data in the table below are based on truncated loan-level disclosures and do not include HECM activity. New Ginnie MBS issuance in the third quarter was up 15.7 percent from the previous quarter. Ginnie MBS production set three consecutive monthly records during the third quarter, culminating in a huge $52.46 billion month in September. Purchase-mortgage activity was the key driver, but the ... [ 4 charts ]
Requiring an undercapitalized issuer to repurchase uninsured performing mortgages out of a mortgage-backed securities pool could increase risk to the federal government, warned Ginnie Mae. Responding to an adverse audit report from the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of the Inspector General, Ginnie said that while it generally accepts the IG’s recommendations, forcing an undercapitalized issuer to buy out performing loans and either hold them in portfolio or sell them at a substantial loss would put the government at greater risk. “This is something we need to be alert to in certain cases,” the agency said. According to the report, Ginnie improperly allowed more than $49 million of single-family mortgages with terminated insurance to remain in its MBS pools for more than one year without obtaining FHA coverage. The IG warned Ginnie could be on the ...
Ginnie Mae FY 2016 Highlights. “So far, we’ve pretty much broken every record,” said a Ginnie Mae spokesperson. Total mortgage-backed securities issuance for FY 2016 was $490.3 billion, “an all-time high by a pretty wide margin,” according to the spokesperson. September MBS issuance was also at an all-time high: $54.8 billion. Ginnie Mae commitment authority for the fiscal year was $430.2 billion. Approximately 2.3 million mortgage loans worth $462 billion underlay Ginnie’s single-family MBS pools in FY 2016. Of this total, $278 billion (1.4 million loans) were purchase mortgages, and $184 billion (0.9 million loans) were refinances or modified loans. Of the purchase dollar volume, first-time homebuyers accounted for $200 billion (1.1 million loans). Of the $462 billion single-family MBS pools, FHA accounted for 57.1 percent ($264 billion), VA, 38.8 percent ($179 billion), and rural housing loans, 3.9 percent ($18 billion). New California Law Protects Spouses of HECM Borrowers from ‘Widow Foreclosure.’ On Sept. 29, 2016, California Gov. Jerry Brown, D, signed Senate Bill 1150 into law to protect widows, widowers and other heirs of mortgage borrowers from unnecessary foreclosures.
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