Republicans in the House of Representatives continued their efforts to chip away at the Dodd-Frank Act during a hearing this week by rolling out critics who said the act not only was a poor and ineffective response to the 2008 financial crisis, but also created a host of new problems and could be contributing to the next debacle. Rep. Sean Duffy, R-WI, chairman of the House Financial Services Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, said a major assumption underlying Dodd-Frank – that the primary cause of the financial crisis was misbehavior by securities market participants – was false. “Main Street lenders are being...

Privately held nonbank mortgage firms – and even some public ones – increasingly are contemplating issuing more debt securities as a way to fund growth. The reliance on debt is seen as a more attractive alternative than going public, which can leave too much of a young company in the hands of outside parties that are merely looking for a quick profit after a lender lists its stock. Then again, not too many mortgage companies are contemplating...

Mortgage servicer Ocwen Financial, the target of a state enforcement action for allegedly mishandling distressed borrowers, said it would delay its regulatory 10-Q filing because of an impairment charge on Ginnie Mae servicing rights. The impairment was caused by a 50 basis point cut in the FHA’s annual mortgage insurance premium, which took effect in January, the servicer said. Although it had expected a $34.4 million profit in the first quarter of 2015, Ocwen took a $17.8 million impairment charge, which included monitoring costs, “strategic advisor expenses,” and fair-value adjustments. FHA lowered the annual MIP to enable more borrowers to obtain an FHA-insured single-family mortgage loan with a 3.5 percent downpayment. Ocwen would likely lose money if it sold off its government-backed MSRs, according to one servicing advisor. Last fall, Ocwen tried to sell its ...

Most real estate investment trusts that invest heavily in residential MBS reported modest declines in the fair value of their MBS holdings during the first quarter, according to an analysis and ranking by Inside MBS & ABS. A group of 16 publicly traded mortgage REITs held a combined $263.94 billion of agency and non-agency MBS as of the end of March. That was down 6.6 percent from the previous quarter, but represented a 1.1 percent increase over the first quarter of 2014. Some 92.6 percent of the group’s residential mortgage securities holdings were...[Includes one data chart]

The volume of new mortgage originations with primary mortgage-insurance coverage held steady during the first quarter of 2015, but there was a noticeable shift toward the government MI programs, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis and ranking. Private mortgage insurers wrote coverage on $45.24 billion of new conventional originations during the first quarter, a 5.3 percent decline from the fourth quarter of last year. But FHA and Veterans Administration loan originations were up over the same period, by 5.5 percent and 6.0 percent, respectively. Based on Ginnie Mae securitization data, the volume of new rural-housing loans insured by the Department of Agriculture fell...[Includes three data charts]

Since late February, Ocwen Financial has struck four different deals to sell $89.4 billion in Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac servicing rights. Although buyer interest in the high-quality receivables was strong, getting those transactions past the Federal Housing Finance Agency has been a different matter. Industry advisors note that in general Fannie and Freddie promise their seller/servicers they will approve MSR transfers within 60 days unless there’s a problem. Last summer, the approval time was increased from 30 days, a change that did not receive much publicity. The FHFA, on the other hand, offers...

FHA volume in Ginnie Mae mortgage-backed securities rebounded in April because of the agency’s price cut in late January and improvements in the economy, according to industry participants. Recent data from the FHA show a sharp uptick in refinance business, which jumped from $2.29 billion in endorsements in February to $8.15 billion in March. Total FHA forward-mortgage business rose by 83.8 percent from February. The surge came...

The agency MBS market in April had its strongest month of new issuance in 20 months thanks to the combination of strong refinance volume and a surge in purchase-mortgage lending. A new Inside MBS & ABS analysis and ranking reveals that Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae issued a total of $121.10 billion of new single-family MBS last month, an increase of 22.1 percent from March. It marked the strongest output since August 2013, when new agency MBS was tapering off from a huge influx of refinance business. Refinance loans continued...[Includes two data charts]

A unique stop-advance feature included in the jumbo MBS issued by Redwood Trust late last week was viewed favorably by investors, according to officials at the real estate investment trust. “We are pleased not only with the pricing execution on this transaction, but also with the level and depth of AAA investor interest,” Marty Hughes, Redwood’s CEO, said this week. The $356.45 million Sequoia Mortgage Trust 2015-2 included...

Big banks in recent years likely focused their refinance efforts on loans in agency MBS that had been purchased by the Federal Reserve, according to a working paper by economists at the Fed. John Kandrac and Bernd Schlusche noted that agency MBS held by the Fed exhibit faster prepayment rates than MBS held by the rest of the market. While some analysts have pinned the prepayments on refi activities by nonbanks, the Fed economists said they found that Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo played a large role in the high prepayment rates for agency MBS purchased by the Fed. The economists noted...