The Association of Mortgage Investors last week urged the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to address ongoing issues raised by the so-called TRID mortgage disclosure rule. “The recent evidence is that the rule, while extremely well-intentioned, has resulted in a climate of legal uncertainty and is chilling private investment in the U.S. mortgage market,” Chris Katopis, executive director of the AMI, wrote to CFPB Director Richard Cordray. The rule took effect...
Litigation over legacy residential MBS deals that went sour in the run-up to the financial crisis continued last week, as California Attorney General Kamala Harris sued investment bank Morgan Stanley for alleged misrepresentations about RMBS investments, which she said contributed to huge losses by investors such as the state’s public pension funds. In what is just the second such use of the False Claims Act by a state, Harris’ complaint, filed in San Francisco Superior Court, alleges that Morgan Stanley violated the FCA, as well as California securities law and other state laws, by allegedly hiding or downplaying the risks of complex investments involving large numbers of underlying loans or other assets. Harris used...
The Blackstone Group, which has several investments in mortgage finance and real estate, is contemplating taking its single-family rental business public. It’s just a matter of when. Late this week, a Blackstone media official declined to discuss the topic of an initial public offering of its SFR business, which was first reported by The Financial Times and mentioned in an investor note from Compass Point Research & Trading. The IPO has...
Since the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s March filing to transfer lawsuits initiated by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shareholders to a new court, a number of plaintiffs have filed motions opposing the transfer, arguing that the cases are substantially different from one another. FHFA said it was looking to prevent future “copycat” cases and ensure a more consistent ruling across the board by having all of the cases heard in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia instead of scattered in different jurisdictions throughout the country. On April 6, the attorneys for plaintiffs David Jacobs and Gregory Hindes said...
The volume of prime non-agency mortgage-backed securities issued in the first quarter of 2016 reveals little about how the market is functioning, according to a new analysis and ranking by Inside Nonconforming Markets. Some $2.92 billion in prime non-agency MBS was issued in the first quarter of 2016, a 61.3 percent increase from the previous quarter but a 36.4 percent decline compared with the first quarter of 2015. Only four prime ... [Includes one data chart]
A single mortgage must meet nearly 150 requirements to achieve compliance with the TRID disclosure rule, according to a framework proposed by members of the Structured Finance Industry Group. Third-party due diligence firms will test loans for most of the TRID requirements, according to a draft of the TRID compliance review scope obtained by Inside Nonconforming Markets. Since the TRID rule took effect in October, due diligence firms have found widespread violations ...
Fitch Ratings revised its criteria for rating non-agency mortgage-backed securities backed by non-qualified mortgages last week. The new standards set the stage for Fitch to rate nonprime non-QM MBS. The new non-QM criteria from Fitch include expanded product assumptions for rating nonprime mortgages and loans to self-employed or non-wage-earning borrowers. When determining litigation liability, Fitch said it will make a distinction between non-QMs for “very high ...
Ginnie Mae issued $93.41 billion of single-family mortgage-backed securities during the first three months of 2016, an 8.6 percent drop from the previous quarter, according to a new Inside FHA/VA Lending analysis of loan-level MBS data, excluding FHA reverse-mortgage activity. Early 2016 was the slowest market in a year for Ginnie MBS production, though it still was stronger than most of the agency’s pre-2015 business. And issuance in the first quarter of 2016 was 17.0 percent ahead of the volume produced during the same period last year. The soft spot in the first quarter was FHA lending, especially purchase-mortgage activity. Issuers delivered $54.44 billion of FHA loans into Ginnie MBS during the period, a 12.1 percent drop from the fourth quarter, including a 15.0 percent decline in FHA purchase mortgages. Securitization of VA loans fell by a ... [4 charts].
There was a modest 1.8 percent increase in refinance business, and refi loans accounted for over half (52.1 percent) of GSE business in the first quarter – the first time refi activity exceeded purchase lending since early last year.
RSS