Two Harbors has been a major player on the post-crisis jumbo MBS market and was even the top-ranked jumbo MBS issuer in the first half of 2016…

The decline in interest rates after the Brexit vote in late June has boosted mortgage originations in recent weeks and caused problems for holders of mortgage servicing rights, according to industry participants at the California Mortgage Bankers Association’s Western Secondary Market Conference in San Francisco this week. Mike Duncan, a hedge manager at Compass Analytics, said 25 percent of his firm’s clients were over capacity at the end of May and 40 percent were over capacity by the end of June. He predicted that over-capacity rates could go even higher if interest rates stay low, increasing demand for refinances. Compass provides pricing, valuation and interest rate risk-management services. Rob Branthover, a managing director at Mortgage Industry Advisory Corp., added...

Caliber executive William Pendleton noted the nonprime MBS recently issued by Lone Star Funds (which owns Caliber) will help the lender significantly reduce interest rates on new originations.

Some banks nearly tripled their bulk MSR acquisitions in 2Q16. SunTrust, for example, bought $7.41 billion of GSE servicing during the period, making it the third most active buyer in the market.

Several large banks accept the current acknowledgement agreement, while others avoid it like the plague.

Bids on both packages are due later in the week.

New issuance of non-mortgage ABS faltered in the second quarter of 2016, but the market has rebounded strongly in recent weeks, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis. New ABS issuance totaled $43.07 billion in the second quarter, a modest decline from the first three months of 2016. That put year-to-date production at just $86.42 billion, off 18.0 percent from the first six months of 2015. Activity picked up...[Includes two data tables]

JPMorgan Chase is preparing to issue a $2.65 billion prime non-agency MBS, including a large share of mortgages eligible for sale to the government-sponsored enterprises. While company officials see promise in the new type of securities, industry participants offer mixed projections on whether other big banks will follow its lead. The planned Chase Mortgage Trust 2016-2 received AAA ratings from Fitch Ratings and Moody’s Investors Service. Mortgages eligible for sale to the GSEs account for 55.0 percent of the dollar volume backing the deal. As with the $1.89 billion Chase Mortgage Trust 2016-1 that priced in March, the bank will retain...

The Federal Home Loan Banks’ Mortgage Partnership Finance program and Redwood Trust announced a number of changes this week to the MPF Direct product. Beginning Aug. 31, the loan limit will increase to $2.5 million and hybrid adjustable-rate mortgages will be eligible for delivery. The MPF Direct program was launched in 2014, with a loan limit of $729,750, the high-cost loan limit for the government-sponsored enterprises at the time. In the third quarter of 2015, the loan limit for the product was increased to $1.5 million. The loan limit for cash-out refinances is $750,000. “We continue...

Industry experts agree that the commercial MBS market is not going to live up to expectations of $100 billion of issuance this year, but they are hopeful the market will rebound after the industry fully implements the Dodd-Frank Act risk-retention rules that take effect Dec. 24, 2016. According to Kenneth Cheng, managing director of CMBS ratings services for Morningstar Credit Ratings, there is much uncertainty in the CMBS market about the actual impact of the risk-retention requirements. “I think everybody has agreed that it will be a negative impact – it’s just the magnitude of that impact that is uncertain,” he told Inside MBS & ABS this week. “It’s going to drive up the cost of CMBS – how much is anybody’s guess.” Also, as the cost of issuing CMBS increases, profit margins will...