Issuance of jumbo MBS and ABS has grown since 2010, but pending Federal Reserve actions regarding interest rates could stop the trend this year, according to industry analysts. The Fed is expected by many to increase interest rates for the first time in years, perhaps as soon as the end of the second quarter of 2015. Standard & Poor’s warned last week that interest rate hikes could threaten the still-rebounding structured finance market. “The Fed’s normalization of monetary policy could create...

The Mortgage Bankers Association has secured a favorable clarification from the Financial Accounting Standards Board regarding the treatment of seriously delinquent mortgages in Ginnie Mae pools. The clarification was requested after one of the Big Four accounting firms began requiring lenders that service 90 days plus delinquent loans to put the loans on the balance sheet with an offsetting liability even if they do not intend to buy the loans out of the pool. The requirement would have been...[Includes one data chart]

With Ocwen about to unload a massive amount of servicing rights will the company still need to have such a large back-office operation in India?

If issuers were to include agency-eligible mortgages with slightly less than pristine underwriting standards in new non-agency mortgage-backed securities, the deals could receive ratings with credit enhancement levels similar to the levels on recent jumbo MBS, according to the results of an exercise released this week by the Treasury Department. Treasury asked six rating services to assign ratings to hypothetical non-agency MBS comprised of $19.75 billion of mortgages ...

JPMorgan Chase this week issued the largest jumbo mortgage-backed security seen since the market started to return in 2010. The $940.06 million deal was backed by adjustable-rate mortgages originated by First Republic Bank. Previously, the largest post-crash deal was a $666.13 million jumbo MBS from Redwood Trust in February 2013. Prior to the financial crisis, many non-agency MBS had balances that topped $1.0 billion, while most jumbo MBS ...

First Republic Bank was the top contributor to jumbo MBS issued in 2014, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside Nonconforming Markets. Officials at First Republic note that the bank tends to sell its originations of fixed-rate mortgages while adjustable-rate mortgages make for better portfolio holdings. However, the secondary market bid was strong enough for First Republic to sell some jumbo ARMs during the year, including a ... [Includes one data chart]

Regulators, rating services and investors are all targeting Ocwen Financial’s servicing of mortgages in non-agency mortgage-backed securities. Company officials responded by acknowledging some of the issues while strongly pushing back on others. Fitch Ratings and Moody’s Investors Service both recently downgraded Ocwen’s servicer ratings. When a servicer’s ratings fall below a certain level, non-agency MBS investors sometimes have the option to ...

After loosening every month for more than a year, underwriting on jumbo mortgages started to tighten in mid-2014, according to new data from the Mortgage Bankers Association and AllRegs. In the past three months, jumbo underwriting has started to loosen again and standards are the loosest they have been since early 2011.Angel Oak Mortgage Solutions announced that it launched a mini-correspondent offering for non-agency nonprime ... [Includes three briefs]

The Mortgage Bankers Association notched a win for small, independent issuers after the Financial Accounting Standards Board agreed with the group’s position on the accounting of seriously delinquent loans in Ginnie Mae pools. At issue is whether companies that service pools with loans that are 90 days or more delinquent should put those loans on their balance sheet even if they have no intention of buying the loans out of the pool. According to the MBA, a Big Four accounting firm issued controversial guidance which would have been burdensome for small mortgage-backed securities issuers that have limited funding and no incentive or history of buying defective loans out of pools. After months of exchanges, FASB staff finally agreed with the MBA’s view that the decision process involves two steps. First, a loan must be 90 days or more delinquent and trigger ...

Two Harbors is a member of the FHLB system via a captive insurance affiliate. The Federal Housing Finance Agency is contemplating snuffing out this avenue of membership...