Two Harbors Investment and other nonbank conduits exited the jumbo market just before pricing for new jumbo mortgage-backed securities improved, according to industry participants. “The difference between a bulk sale execution and a Sequoia execution right now is only an eighth of a point,” Marty Hughes, CEO of Redwood Trust, said this week during the real estate investment trust’s earnings call. “That’s the tightest it’s probably been in a year and a half.” Christopher Abate, Redwood’s ...

Two Harbors Investment more than doubled its jumbo mortgage-backed security issuance in 2015 compared with the previous year, but the increase wasn’t enough to make it worthwhile for the real estate investment trust to continue operating a mortgage conduit. “As we look forward, the environment just was not one that was conducive to the continuation of the business,” Thomas Siering, Two Harbors’ president and CEO, said last week during the REIT’s earnings call. “The market ...

S&P Global Ratings upgraded servicer ratings for Ocwen Loan Servicing to average from below average this week. Ocwen’s stock price increased significantly after the upgrade because of ratings clauses in Ocwen’s subservicing agreements with New Residential Investment. S&P downgraded Ocwen’s servicer ratings in June 2015 and if the ratings weren’t raised by April 2017, New Residential could transfer the subservicing to a different company. As of the end of ...

While private mortgage insurance on new non-agency mortgage originations has been minimal since 2008, some industry participants project that private MI will play a role in the non-agency mortgage-backed security market going forward. “Mortgage insurers may get more involved with the private-label market, and this may be another source of third-party oversight,” Morningstar Credit Ratings said in a recent report. “While it is too early to predict the investors’ response to ...

The FHA’s and VA’s acceptance of residential properties with existing senior PACE (Property Assessed Clean Energy) liens is credit positive for asset-backed securities backed by PACE assessments and could have a mixed effect on some residential mortgage-backed securities, according to a new analysis by Moody’s Investors Services. The move is expected to expand the availability of mortgage financing for purchasers of homes with PACE obligations as well as ...

The GSEs have reduced their holdings of subprime MBS to just $17.5 billion.

The $1.5 billion offered by MIAC has an average interest rate of 4.22 percent and delinquencies of 2.65 percent.

Lenders originated home loans that included primary mortgage insurance at a hectic pace during the second quarter of 2016, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance ranking and analysis. A whopping $196.23 billion of new mortgage originations carried private MI during the second quarter, including significant increases in both private MI and government-insured mortgage insurance. That was up 34.1 percent from the first three months of 2016, and represented the biggest quarterly total on record. Private MI posted...[Includes three data tables]

The fear is that loan pricing will be worse and loan-to-value ratios will be more restrictive.

The share of refi loans with scores of 740 or higher edged up from 57.8 percent in the first quarter to 61.6 percent in the second.