It’s been a busy spring for sales of mortgage servicing rights, with investment advisors pushing out several new auction notices a week. And there’s even more good news: for the first time in several years, prices appear to be balanced, with neither buyers nor sellers having the upper hand. “This is the most balanced market I’ve seen since 2013 or 2014,” said one East Coast-based investment banker, who spoke under the condition he and his firm remain anonymous. “Right now, I think both buyers and sellers can get good deals.” Another positive for the market: “In terms of bidders, there seems to be plenty.” Mark Garland, president of MountainView Servicing Group, Denver, sees...

Credit Suisse this week issued a $91.2 million non-agency MBS backed by seasoned FHA mortgages. CSMC 2017-FHA1 marked the first non-agency securitization of re-performing FHA mortgages since 2010. The deal received an A rating from DBRS and an A1 rating from Moody’s Investors Service with subordination of 16.50 percent on the senior tranche. Moody’s cited a number of credit “challenges,” including uncertainty about FHA insurance payouts for liquidated mortgages, insufficient information on loan modifications and weak representations and warranties. The mortgages in the deal have...

While the industry continues to debate the merits of allowing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to build a capital cushion for “zero day” in 2018, investors in MBS have a different agenda: making sure that whatever the future holds for the government-sponsored enterprises, it had better include a federal guarantee on conventional mortgage securities. Without it, the MBS market would suffer greatly – as would residential lending and the sale of new and existing homes. So far, no one knows...

The credit landscape is improving as more lenders introduce new credit-scoring mechanisms and eligibility requirements, but it may not mean much for mortgage origination volume, at least in the short term, according to a new study by mortgage consulting firm the Stratmor Group. The study noted that when faced with slower housing growth due to demographics, affordability, and higher healthcare costs, lenders will look to loosen underwriting standards to feed their production capacity. Rob Chrisman, senior advisor with Stratmor, said many of the “good borrowers” have refinanced and bought homes already, leaving lenders with borrowers of lesser credit quality. “Lenders and investors, too, are...

Four whole-business securitizations totaling $3.58 billion are in the works, according to presale reports, including a $900.0 million deal from Coinstar. The securitization from Coinstar received a preliminary BBB rating from Kroll Bond Rating Agency. The company owns nearly 20,000 kiosks that count change located in grocery stores and other retail venues, mostly in the U.S. The company generates...

Ginnie Mae is making enhancements to a tool developed for MBS issuers to help them compare their performance with other issuers and to determine whether they are meeting agency expectations. Improvements to the Issuer Operation Performance Profile (IOPP) tool also would increase scoring transparency and make reports clearer and easier to understand, the agency said. The IOPP was introduced...

VantageScore is gaining traction as an alternative to FICO credit scores in consumer lending and structured finance, according to a study by DBRS. Introduced in 2006 as a joint venture among three national credit bureaus – TransUnion, Experian and Equifax – VantageScore was first used in securitization transactions backed by student-loan refinancings. Its transition to consumer loans and structured finance demonstrates industry acceptance as an alternative to the widely used FICO scores, DBRS pointed out. The study compares...

Purchase-mortgage lending saw a big drop in volume during the first quarter of 2017, but indicators suggest that the sector has been rebounding in recent months and will post a solid gain by the time the year is over. An estimated $205.0 billion of purchase mortgages were originated in the first quarter, a sizable 19.6 percent decline from the previous period. But with an even bigger 44.6 percent slump in refinance lending, purchase mortgages accounted for over half (53.2 percent) of total first-lien originations in the first three months of the year. It was...[Includes three data tables]

The banking industry again boosted its holdings of single-family MBS during the first quarter of 2017, although results varied significantly among various major players in the market. Banks and thrifts reported $1.762 trillion in held-to-maturity and available-for-sale MBS as of the end of March, a 1.5 percent increase from the previous quarter, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS ranking and analysis of bank call reports. With Federal Reserve MBS purchases in a holding pattern, banks and other investors are in a better position to increase their holdings as the supply of agency MBS slowly grows. The industry held...[Includes two data tables]

Issuers of commercial MBS are facing significant problems with risk-retention requirements five months after the rule took effect, according to an industry attorney. Industry participants continue to push for guidance from federal regulators, but the response so far has been limited. “The rule is woefully inadequate as a guidebook for compliance, with massive white space, periodically interrupted by obscure bubbles of facial clarity,” according to Rick Jones, a partner at the Dechert law firm. “Unclear rules and potentially existential liability are not the stuff of a deal easily made.” In a recent commentary, Jones said...