Freddie Mac and Shellpoint Partners are preparing to price new securities in the aftermath of the presidential election, and Select Portfolio Servicing priced $600.0 million in an MBS backed by servicer advance receivables this week. Freddie is about to issue a Whole Loan Securities transaction, which would mark the second such issuance from the government-sponsored enterprise this year and the fourth overall, dating back to the first WLS transaction that closed in July 2015. The balance of the planned Whole Loan Securities Trust, Series 2016-SC02, is...

As the new breed of subprime lenders continues to increase originations, these firms are now actively pondering whether they should approach the rating agencies about getting their firms rated. Dan Perl, founder and CEO of nonprime/non-QM lender Citadel Servicing, Irvine, CA, said his firm has approached Fitch Ratings and hopes to get rated as both a servicer and originator. Perl believes some of his competitors are going down the same path as well. He told...

Credit Suisse issued two more series of notes this week on its mortgage-lending warehouse securitization offering, according to Moody’s Investors Service. The $1.20 billion in total new issuance from the Wall Street firm followed two notes it issued in August totaling $800 million. As with the August issuance, the new Mortgage Repurchase Agreement Financing Trust, Series 2016-3 and Series 2016-4, received A2 ratings from Moody’s. All of the deals were underwritten by Credit Suisse and HSBC Securities. The transactions are backed...

Ginnie Mae’s decision to change the pooling requirements for streamline refinance loans should boost investor confidence and slow new production of GNMA IIs, Deutsche Bank analysts said. The change could be seen as mildly more restrictive than current pooling standards, particularly having more impact on VA loans, which unlike FHA, have no seasoning requirement to qualify for streamline refinancing, said Jeana Curro, bank research analyst. Under new guidance issued last month, in order to be pooled into standard Ginnie I or Ginnie II multi-issuer pools, streamline refi loans must show...

Goldman Sachs has agreed to pay an undisclosed settlement amount to ACA Financial Guaranty Corp. to resolve allegations of fraud related to insurance on a collateralized debt obligation backed by subprime mortgages. Details of the Abacus CDO settlement were not disclosed, although ACA initially sought $120 million in damages. First filed in 2011, ACA’s lawsuit accused Goldman Sachs and hedge fund Paulson & Co. of fraudulently persuading it to guarantee payments on the CDO prior to the financial crisis. ACA alleged...

The primary mortgage insurance market remained on track for its best year ever during the third quarter of 2016, as the government-insured sectors gained some ground on private MIs, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance ranking and analysis. Mortgage lenders originated a record $220.46 billion of home loans with some form of primary MI during the third quarter, a 16.6 percent increase from the previous period. That brought year-to-date primary MI activity to $553.77 billion, just $92.40 billion less than the all-time annual record of $646.17 billion set in 2015. The government-insured market – mostly FHA and VA – was...[Includes three data tables]

Come February 1 of next year, Fannie Mae will temporarily halt bulk transfers of mortgage servicing rights as it upgrades its reporting systems, a change the industry has known about for quite some time, but one that still promises to cause headaches. The moratorium runs from Feb. 1, 2017, through March 31, according to Fannie lender letter LL-2016-01, at a time when seller-servicers are implementing new investor reporting requirements. The government-sponsored enterprise is advising servicers that if they want to avoid disruption they “should not propose post-delivery servicing transfer effective dates that fall during” the two months. According to investment bankers that buy and sell servicing rights for a living, the moratorium can be worked...

The question of whether FHA should do another mortgage insurance premium reduction is pretty much on stakeholders’ minds as they anticipate the release of the annual actuarial review of the Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund next week. Analysts, however, are not ready to change their opinion that further MIP cuts are unlikely. Some analysts said they would reconsider their views if the upcoming report showed strong growth in the MMI Fund, while others believe FHA’s priorities today are different than they were in early 2015, when the agency cut the annual premium for forward mortgages to 0.85 percent. The FHA’s decision to lower the annual MIP was spurred...

After soaring to nearly a four-year high in September, monthly production of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae MBS starting coming to earth in October. The three agencies issued a total of $146.68 billion of single-family MBS last month, down 8.8 percent from September. Even with the downturn, October still ranked as the second-highest monthly issuance since June 2013. Year-to-date production edged...[Includes two data tables]

The Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee appears to be repeating last year’s story line of promising multiple increases in interest rates at the start of the year, only to delay and delay until the final month, when it finally raised rates a bare minimum of 25 basis points. This month, the Fed passed on another opportunity to raise rates and suggested to many in the market that it finally will ratchet the federal funds target rate up a notch at its final meeting of the year in mid-December. The FOMC said the labor market has continued to strengthen and economic activity has picked up from the modest pace seen in the first half of this year. “Although the unemployment rate is little changed in recent months, job gains have been solid,” the committee said. Meanwhile, household spending has risen...