Ocwen Financial pushed back this week against claims from large investors that have worked to remove the nonbank as servicer on 119 non-agency MBS. “By all indications, the holders employed unsupportable assumptions and manipulated their analysis to advance their agenda,” Timothy Hayes, an executive vice president and general counsel at Ocwen, wrote in a letter to the trustees of the MBS in question. The letter was a response to claims made ...

In 2014, Freddie Mac securitized $6.983 billion of re-performing mortgages, double what it did the year prior, and a sign that this niche market is heating up. As for Fannie Mae’s participation in “re-performers,” that’s a different matter entirely. The government-sponsored enterprise has yet to stick its toe in the water, though a spokesman for the company told Inside MBS & ABS that “it’s something we continue to evaluate.” But just how hot might the sector get ...

Nomura Holdings is unlikely to suffer a hit in ratings because of the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s mortgage-backed securities lawsuit, but the litigation may yet prove costly to the Japanese financial holding company, according to a recent report from Fitch Ratings. Nomura went to trial on March 16 to defend itself against allegations that it misrepresented the underlying asset quality of MBS it sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac prior to the financial crisis ...

A bill to replace the Federal Housing Finance Agency with a beefed up Ginnie Mae and set Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on a path to liquidation has been reintroduced in the House. The Partnership to Strengthen Homeownership Act was first introduced in July 2014 to wind down Fannie and Freddie over a five-year timeframe. Reps. John Delaney, D-MD, John Carney, D-DE, and Jim Himes, D-CT, are the lead sponsors of the measure. They said the bill takes the best ideas from both parties to create a housing finance system that combines the strengths of the private and public sectors.The congressmen agreed that things need to be done differently.

Mortgages with credit scores exceeding 740 continued to dominate the conventional conforming market in 2014, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of loans sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac last year. High-score borrowers accounted for 62.0 percent of loans securitized through the two government-sponsored enterprises in 2014. They accounted for an even bigger 66.2 percent of purchase-mortgages loans ... [Includes one data chart]

A bipartisan group of U.S. Senate lawmakers this week urged the Federal Housing Finance Agency to move the budding common securitization platform for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac “past the duopolistic tendencies of the past.” The FHFA originally directed the two government-sponsored enterprises to develop the CSP so that it would be open to and functional for all residential mortgage securitizers, but the agency last year detoured slightly ... [Includes one data chart]

A number of non-agency MBS investors with mezzanine and subordinate positions in deals serviced by Ocwen Financial support the troubled servicer, according to industry participants. The investors have pushed back against an effort by other investors holding senior tranches to get servicing transferred from Ocwen. “Ocwen is a critically important servicer in private-label residential MBS,” John Devaney, CEO of United Capital Markets, wrote in a recent letter ...

MBS investors – so far – are losing little sleep over the effect plunging oil prices might have on the market, even though delinquency rates in Texas are beginning to creep up. In some quarters of the industry, the fear is that a major (and further) correction in the energy sector will lead to massive layoffs in states dependent on oil, and that mortgagors, in time, will go delinquent on their loans. In turn, MBS and servicing rights that have a heavy concentration in ...

While Wall Street professionals spent the run-up to this week’s meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee wondering whether the Fed would lose its “patience” regarding a future increase in interest rates, the FOMC continued its present course on MBS investment. “The committee is maintaining its existing policy of reinvesting principal payments from its holdings of agency debt and agency MBS in agency MBS and of rolling over maturing ...

In fiscal 2014, Ginnie Mae approved roughly 43 companies as MBS issuer-servicers, a 44 percent reduction from the year prior, according to an analysis of agency data by Inside MBS & ABS. So far, in fiscal 2015, which began October 1 of last year, roughly 25 firms have been granted issuance approval. Moreover, the companies being given the greenlight to participate in the program are overwhelmingly nonbanks. The fall-off in both applications and ...