The proposal to restructure the credit-risk transfer debt-note programs at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to make them more attractive to real estate investment trusts likely won’t have a negative impact on the credit risk and quality of those deals, Morningstar said in a new report. The proposed changes to Fannie’s Connecticut Avenue Securities and Freddie’s Structured Agency Credit Risk programs would characterize them as real estate mortgage investment conduits. This would allow REITs and some overseas investors to participate more broadly in the programs. Currently, the structure of the government-sponsored enterprises’ popular CRT programs doesn’t meet...

A resolution of the charges against Ocwen Financial brought by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and state regulators is expected to be “protracted,” according to industry analysts. In April, the CFPB and state regulators took a number of actions against the nonbank, alleging servicing- and lending-related violations. Ocwen is appealing the findings. The legal issues prompted mixed reactions from rating services. Fitch Ratings affirmed its B- issuer-default rating for ...

Ginnie Mae issuers were moderately busier in the second quarter of 2017 than during the first three months of the year, according to a new analysis and ranking by Inside FHA/VA Lending. Issuers produced $112.71 billion of single-family mortgage-backed securities during the second quarter, including MBS backed by FHA home-equity conversion mortgages. It was a 5.5 percent increase from the previous period and brought year-to-date issuance to $219.51 billion, down 0.7 percent from the first half of 2016. The quarterly uptick in total issuance may not sound like much, but contrasts sharply with production at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which dropped 13.1 percent from the first to the second quarter. Ginnie volume was up because it had a deeper vein of purchase-money mortgages than there was in the government-sponsored enterprise market. Purchase loans accounted for 63.4 percent of ... [Charts]

PennyMac has revised master mortgage repurchase agreements with Credit Suisse to increase its funding capacity for new loan originations and acquisition of mortgage servicing rights, the company disclosed in a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The increase is temporary – effective from June 23 through Sept. 29 – but it will boost PennyMac’s funding capacity by $486 million. On June 23, 2017, PennyMac agreed to revised terms of its Third Amended and Restated Master Purchase Agreement (CS Repurchase Amendment), which would increase temporarily its maximum committed purchase price to $943 million from $700 million. Entered into on April 28, 2017, the amended repurchase agreement would allow PennyMac to sell to Credit Suisse and later repurchase certain newly originated residential and small-balance multifamily mortgages. The agreement also includes ...

Chicago HECM Lender Arraigned on Fraud Charges. Mark Steven Diamond, a mortgage loan originator with offices in Chicago and Calumet City, IL, was arraigned on fraud charges in connection with a $7 million reverse mortgage scheme that targeted elderly homeowners and FHA lenders. According to the Department of Justice, Diamond deceived lenders into making FHA-insured reverse mortgage loans to homeowners who did not apply for a loan or had been beguiled to do so by the smooth-talking suspect. Diamond allegedly pocketed title-company checks intended for the borrowers, with the help of an unindicted co-schemer. Cynthia Wallace, who posed as a representative of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, was indicted along with Diamond. Using at least three aliases, Wallace allegedly collected money from victims for home repairs, which she claimed Diamond would ...

The MBS and ABS market was a mixed bag in terms of new issuance during the second quarter, as overall production was down slightly from the beginning of the year, according to a new analysis by Inside MBS & ABS. A total of $430.98 billion of single-family MBS, non-mortgage ABS and commercial-property securitizations was issued in the second quarter, down 2.6 percent from the first three months of the year. That pushed year-to-date issuance to $873.47 billion, up 8.1 percent from the first six months of 2016. Single-family MBS accounted for a hefty 75.1 percent of total issuance so far in 2017, with non-mortgage ABS (13.2 percent) and commercial MBS (11.7 percent) making up the rest. But single-family turned...[Includes three data tables]

Wells Fargo is defending last week’s decision to hold back more than $90 million from investors attempting to recoup losses from legacy single-family MBS. The bank said it withheld distribution of reserve amounts to the plaintiffs in the 2014 trustee lawsuit “when certain RMBS transactions were liquidated at another party’s direction.” A Bloomberg report said New Residential Investment Corp. exercised its cleanup buyback option to reduce its own administrative expenses. “Cleanup buyback” refers to early redemption of the remaining issue amount by the seller when the principal has been paid down to an insignificant amount. In a statement, Wells Fargo explained...

An analysis of non-qualified mortgages suggests that many of these borrowers have credit qualities strong enough to qualify for a mortgage that could be delivered to the government-sponsored enterprises. However, issues involving credit events and income documentation can disqualify such borrowers from conventional mortgages. According to an analysis by Morningstar Credit Ratings, the weighted-average loan-to-value ratio for securitized non-QMs is 75.2 percent and the average debt-to-income ratio on the loans is 36.6 percent. The rating service noted that QMs (including agency and non-agency mortgages) have an average LTV ratio around 69.0 percent and an average DTI ratio around 32.3 percent. In addition to showing that certain characteristics don’t differ much between QM borrowers and non-QM borrowers, the analysis suggests...

Leading Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee this week launched an ambitious effort to draft a bipartisan housing-finance reform bill, and possibly approve it by year end. Several lawmakers from both sides of the aisle cited a growing consensus about how that reform should be undertaken, with most agreeing on the preservation of the to-be-announced market and the need for an explicit government guarantee for MBS backed by conventional mortgages. Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, R-ID, listed...

Communication among investors in non-agency MBS looks to be increasingly important. Fitch Ratings has included an assessment of a deal’s bondholder communication platform in revised criteria for residential MBS while the Structured Finance Industry Group continues to work on recommendations for bondholder communication. “Fitch views the inclusion of a bondholder communication platform as a best practice for rep-and-warrant frameworks, particularly in transactions that rely on bondholder votes to influence rep-and-warrant review decisions,” the rating service said. Fitch said...