Redwood Trust this week reduced the amount of jumbo-mortgage volume the real estate investment trust expects to acquire this year, citing competition for originations, among other issues. At the beginning of the year, officials at Redwood projected that the REIT would purchase $7.0 billion in jumbos. Through the end of July, Redwood had purchased $3.0 billion in jumbos. Officials at Redwood said the REIT is on track to purchase $5.5 billion to $7.0 billion in jumbos ...

Fitch Ratings updated its criteria for estimating losses on mortgages in non-agency mortgage-backed securities this week. The main change for jumbo MBS involves the treatment of retail originations by lenders that have not been reviewed by Fitch. Previously, retail originations from such lenders would not receive positive consideration in the calculation for the probability of default. The rating service will now apply the retail benefit to ... [Includes three briefs]

Sellers saw a modest increase in VA loans delivered to Ginnie Mae in the second quarter of 2015, most of which were streamline refinance loans, but FHA definitely took the cake, according to an Inside FHA/VA Lending analysis of agency data. Approximately $39.1 billion in VA purchase and refi loans were placed in Ginnie Mae pools in the second quarter, up 11.8 percent from the prior quarter. Of that amount, $20.9 billion were VA refinances, up 2.1 percent from the first quarter. Some 52 percent of the VA refis were originated in-house while correspondents accounted for 30.7 percent. Brokers brought in 17.3 percent of the securitized VA refi loans. VA purchase loans underlie an estimated $18.2 billion in Ginnie mortgage-backed securities in the second quarter, 48.4 percent of them retail. That number was up 25.5 percent from the previous quarter. VA loan correspondents were busy as well, accounting for ... [ 2 charts ]

A growing number of issuers are engaging in servicing transfers prematurely or making changes to their servicing platforms, causing problems for Ginnie Mae’s monthly pool-level and loan-level reporting. A Ginnie Mae issuer “transfers servicing” when it shifts in-house servicing to a subservicer, moves servicing from one subservicer to another, or relocates servicing in-house. Effective servicing as well as accurate and timely reporting are critical to Ginnie’s mortgage-backed securities program, the company said in recently issued guidance on servicing transfers. The new policy guidance would ensure that issuers have the capacity and oversight controls at all times to meet their obligations under the Ginnie Mae MBS program. Currently, issuers are required to obtain Ginnie’s approval before engaging in any servicing transfer with a subservicer or from one subservicer to another. Effective immediately, any issuer that wishes to ...

Ginnie Mae said new MBS issuers need to gain some experience in the agency’s program before they are allowed to do servicing transfers, but some newly approved issuers have attempted to do so. Roy Hormuth, director of single-family securitization at Ginnie Mae, said there has been some misconception among new issuers about doing a co-issuance program in their first month in the Ginnie program despite the fact that they are not ready for it. New issuers must first demonstrate that they can successfully manage the servicing themselves before they can transfer servicing immediately, he said. In a co-issuance transaction, a company sells...

Heavy refinance activity in the first half of 2015 caused a significant shift in the kinds of single-family MBS produced by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae. Issuance of MBS backed by adjustable-rate mortgages has dropped sharply in 2015, and ARMs haven’t had much of a presence for years. ARM MBS production by Fannie and Freddie in the first half of 2015 was down 20.1 percent from a year ago. The drop in Ginnie ARM securitization was less severe, 18.3 percent, but ARMs accounted for an even smaller share of overall production (1.7 percent) at Ginnie than the 2.9 percent share they had in government-sponsored enterprise MBS. Oddly, the heavy refinance market in the first half of 2015 did not appear...[Includes two data tables]

The Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee this week concluded its 53rd consecutive meeting without raising interest rates, issuing a statement that provided no hint whatsoever that such an increase would occur this year, notwithstanding previous commentary and the wishes of many on Wall Street. “To support continued progress toward maximum employment and price stability, the committee today reaffirmed its view that the current 0 to 0.25 percent target range for the federal funds rate remains appropriate,” said the Fed in its now-boilerplate language. In determining how long to maintain this target range, the FOMC said...

Ginnie Mae this week adopted a prior-approval policy for mortgage servicers that switch subservicers, bring subservicing in-house or move in-house servicing to subservicers. Noting an increasing number of companies that are making such changes in their servicing operations, the agency said some mandatory reporting requirements are getting lost in the shuffle. Effective immediately, any Ginnie issuer that wants to bring servicing in-house from a subservicer must get the agency’s prior written approval, according to All-Participants Memo 15-11. Existing rules require...

A rebound in multifamily MBS issuance by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae pushed total securitization of commercial mortgages up slightly in the second quarter of 2015. A total of $53.96 billion of income-property mortgages were securitized in the second quarter, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS market analysis. That was up a scant 0.6 percent from the first quarter of 2015. All of the gain came...

Moody’s Investors Service is worried about increasing leverage in commercial MBS conduit deals, which reached peak levels not seen since 2007. Issuance of non-agency commercial MBS has been strong in recent years, boosted by demand for conduit deals. In a recent report, Moody’s noted that the credit quality of conduit deals continues to deteriorate, with the third-quarter pipeline indicating further increases to loan-to-value ratios derived by the rating service. The Moody’s LTV ratio on conduit CMBS hit...