Moody’s Investors Service has asked the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to dismiss the remaining claim in a lawsuit alleging manipulation of credit ratings leading up to the financial crisis. In its motion to dismiss, Moody’s said that plaintiff Ilya Eric Kolchinksy’s second amended complaint fails to show that the rating agency used its electronic “ratings delivery service” to issue false ratings on MBS that later turned bad. In 2012, Kolchinsky, a former managing director at Moody’s, filed...
The market for mortgage-backed securities backed by newly originated nonprime mortgages received a jolt this month as Angel Oak Capital Advisors and Deephaven Mortgage separately issued new deals, according to offering documents obtained by Inside Nonconforming Markets. Angel Oak Mortgage Trust I, LLC 2016-1 was backed by mortgages with an unpaid principal balance of $132.65 million and Deephaven Residential Mortgage Trust 2016-1 was ...
JPMorgan Chase is preparing to issue a $302.27 million jumbo mortgage-backed security where non-qualified mortgages will account for 20.2 percent of the loan balance, according to presale reports. All of the mortgages in the planned JPMorgan Mortgage Trust 2016-2 were originated by First Republic Bank via the retail channel. Most prime MBS issued since QM standards took effect in 2014 have been backed solely by QMs and the few deals that have included non-QMs tend ...
Redwood Trust has no plans to suspend issuance of jumbo mortgage-backed securities, according to Kristin Brown, a vice president and head of investor relations at Redwood. The Redwood official was responding to a report by Asset-Backed Alert, which cited anonymous sources claiming that the real estate investment trust will issue a jumbo MBS during the third quarter then “pull back from the market indefinitely.” Brown said that while additional transactions are always ...
The new nonprime mortgage-backed securities from Angel Oak Capital Advisors and Deephaven Mortgage included a number of mortgages with compliance issues relating to the TILA-RESPA Integrated Disclosure rule, according to offering documents obtained by Inside Nonconforming Markets. Part of the compliance issues stem from the ongoing uncertainty regarding cures for minor errors. While the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a proposed rule ...
Ocwen Financial agreed to a consent order with the Washington State Department of Financial Institutions this week, which included a $900,000 fine. The consent order related to Ocwen’s use of offshore unlicensed affiliate companies to service mortgages on properties in Washington state. Going forward, Ocwen agreed to service Washington-based mortgages only through licensed entities and the state will not license foreign entities ... [Includes three briefs]
FHA saw a modest rise in originations midway through 2016 compared to the same period last year, but VA did a lot better with a double-digit increase in loan production, according to an analysis of Ginnie Mae data. Lenders delivered $123.0 billion of FHA-insured loans to Ginnie pools during the first half of 2016, up 8.4 percent from the previous year. FHA’s midyear production was driven by a surge in purchase-mortgage lending in the second quarter, which also pushed volume higher for VA as well as conventional-conforming mortgages. Government-backed lending rose 32.3 percent from the first quarter to approximately $131.0 billion in second-quarter originations, according to Inside Mortgage Finance, an affiliate publication of Inside FHA/VA Lending. It was the highest three-month total for government-insured lending on record, although private mortgage insurance did more business in the ... [2 charts]
Major industry trade groups are asking FHA and VA to suspend proposed guidelines for energy-improvement loans and give stakeholders an opportunity to comment. In a joint letter, 11 trade groups warned that the proposed agency guidelines regarding Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) loans raises serious concerns that must be resolved before implementation of any PACE guidance. Prior to the issuance of the new guidelines, both FHA and VA prohibited the financing or refinancing if there was a lien other than the FHA-insured or VA-guaranteed mortgages. PACE programs are available in 19 states but most are in California. They provide financing for home improvements and clean-energy upgrades that would result in more efficient use of water and electricity, and ultimately savings for homeowners. The PACE obligation is repaid through a property-tax assessment, which takes a ...
Mortgage Company President Charged with Defrauding Ginnie Mae. Robert Pena, president and founder of the now-defunct Mortgage Security Inc., was charged in federal district court in Boston for allegedly bilking Ginnie Mae out of nearly $3 million. MSI was an approved participant in the Ginnie Mae mortgage-backed securities program, pooling eligible single-family mortgages and selling the securitized products to investors. The firm also serviced the underlying loans. In 2011, Pena allegedly began diverting borrower payments and huge loan-payoff amounts into secret accounts, which he used to fund personal and business activities. Likewise, he is said to have funneled borrowers’ escrow funds and mortgage-insurance premiums into other personal accounts. In total, Pena pocketed $3 million due Ginnie Mae, which had to pay investors whose investments it had guaranteed, according to the ...