Two Harbors Investment and Five Oaks Investment separately announced plans to end their jumbo mortgage conduit operations due to profitability issues. “We believe that current and expected mortgage market conditions and competitive pressures will prevent us from growing this business to a scale that meets our long-term goals and financial expectations,” said Thomas Siering, Two Harbors’ president and CEO. The Two Harbors announcement came...

Marketplace lender Social Finance is preparing to issue a $480.55 million ABS backed by unsecured consumer loans, its second such deal to date. So far, 10 of its 12 securitizations have used student loans as collateral. According to a report by DBRS, SCLP 2016-2 consists of $425.88 million of class A notes and $54.67 million of B notes. The package is expected to price early next week, but at press time no information was available regarding the coupons. The class A notes received...

Pricing for new jumbo mortgage-backed securities has improved recently, prompting Redwood Trust to issue a new transaction relatively quickly. Redwood issued its first jumbo MBS of the year, a $344.89 million deal, in early June. While the company issued an average of one jumbo MBS per month in 2013, the real estate investment trust has largely shifted to whole-loan sales of jumbos in recent years due to better pricing for such transactions. At an investor conference ...

Despite quickening refinance activity, the FHA single-family market soared over the $1 trillion mark in loans pooled in Ginnie Mae mortgage-backed securities during the second quarter of 2016, according to a new Inside FHA/VA Lending analysis. A record $1.001 trillion of FHA single-family loans made up the lion’s share of collateral backing Ginnie MBS as of the end of June. That was a 1.3 percent increase from the previous quarter and a 5.5 percent gain from the midway point in 2015. Steady growth in FHA loans helped push Ginnie single-family MBS to $1.576 trillion outstanding, topping Freddie Mac for second place in the agency market. The VA loan guaranty program was still the fastest-growing corner of the government-insured market, with total VA loans in Ginnie pools up 3.8 percent from March and 16.7 percent higher than a year ago. The actual amount of FHA and VA loans outstanding is somewhat ... [ 4 charts ]

USMI Names MGIC Chief as Chairman. U.S. Mortgage Insurance has tapped Patrick Sinks, chief executive of MGIC Investment Corp., to be the trade group’s new chairman. Sinks succeeds USMI Chairman Rohit Gupta, president and CEO of Genworth Mortgage Insurance. Sinks served previously as USMI’s vice chairman. Bradley Shuster, chairman/chief executive for NMI Holdings, will take overNew Reverse-Mortgage Product. California Mortgage Advisors has expanded its reverse-mortgage menu, with the addition of a non-FHA reverse mortgage option of up to $6 million for select clients. With the new product, CMA joins a handful of private reverse-mortgage lenders that will consider properties valued up to $6 million. Last year, American Advisors Group, the largest Home Equity Conversion Mortgage lender, announced its AAG Advantage lending program, which features the ...

The decline in interest rates after the Brexit vote in late June has boosted mortgage originations in recent weeks and caused problems for holders of mortgage servicing rights, according to industry participants at the California Mortgage Bankers Association’s Western Secondary Market Conference in San Francisco this week. Mike Duncan, a hedge manager at Compass Analytics, said 25 percent of his firm’s clients were over capacity at the end of May and 40 percent were over capacity by the end of June. He predicted that over-capacity rates could go even higher if interest rates stay low, increasing demand for refinances. Compass provides pricing, valuation and interest rate risk-management services. Rob Branthover, a managing director at Mortgage Industry Advisory Corp., added...

JPMorgan Chase is preparing to issue a $2.65 billion prime non-agency MBS, including a large share of mortgages eligible for sale to the government-sponsored enterprises. While company officials see promise in the new type of securities, industry participants offer mixed projections on whether other big banks will follow its lead. The planned Chase Mortgage Trust 2016-2 received AAA ratings from Fitch Ratings and Moody’s Investors Service. Mortgages eligible for sale to the GSEs account for 55.0 percent of the dollar volume backing the deal. As with the $1.89 billion Chase Mortgage Trust 2016-1 that priced in March, the bank will retain...

Stakeholders in the MBS market should pay attention to a recent U.S. 11th Circuit opinion concerning a jury verdict in which the court focused on the similarities and differences between two kinds of securities fraud, suggested attorneys in their analysis of the case. Although the opinion in SEC v. Radius Capital Corp. is unpublished and not a binding precedent, it gives further clarity to two of the most important rules used by the Securities and Exchange Commission in targeting securities fraud, according to attorneys with the law firm Carlton Fields. The SEC sued...

Ginnie Mae edged past Freddie Mac in servicing outstanding on single-family mortgages tied to mortgage-backed securities during the second quarter of 2016, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside Mortgage Finance. MBS disclosure reports show the supply of Ginnie mortgage servicing rights grew 2.1 percent during the second quarter, climbing to $1.576 trillion, excluding multifamily and reverse mortgage MBS. The supply of Freddie single-family servicing edged up just 0.4 percent from March, reaching $1.558 trillion and slipping to third in the agency MSR market. Fannie Mae single-family MSR servicing declined...[Includes two data tables]

A new tax policy proposed by the Internal Revenue Service in April aimed at corporate “earnings stripping” tax avoidance maneuvers could cause significant problems for the MBS and ABS markets, according to industry participants. The proposed rule from the IRS under Section 385 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 would treat related-party debt as equity, aiming to reduce internal restructurings at foreign corporations by establishing new taxes. The Structured Finance Industry Group’s Tax Policy Committee submitted...