For several months now, Arvest Bank has been working on a roughly $28 billion servicing sale with a subservicing component extended to the eventual buyer, but so far a deal has been allusive, according to investment banking sources familiar with the situation. “From what I can tell, the package is still out there,” said one source who was briefed on the situation. Arvest Bank services...

New issuance of agency single-family MBS climbed for the eighth consecutive month in October, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis and ranking. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae issued a total of $93.01 billion of new single-family MBS during October, up 2.1 percent from September. October production was the highest monthly volume for the market since October 2013, and reflected steady growth since new issuance bottomed out in March of this year. But the gain was...[Includes two data charts]

Rating agencies and Wall Street firms are paying close attention to the mounting regulatory problems at Ocwen Financial, fearful that more bad news could lead to servicing downgrades, which in turn could hamper its ability as a master servicer of MBS. One servicing advisor who has worked with Ocwen over the past two years noted that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pay close attention to the master servicing ratings of their counterparties. “You have to maintain minimum ratings and if you don’t – there’s going to be trouble,” he said. Downgrades, he added, can lead...

Servicers are increasingly executing their clean-up call options on vintage non-agency MBS, paying off investors at par and realizing profits by liquidating real estate owned properties. This year has been the most active year for clean-up calls on non-agency MBS since 2007, according to analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. And that’s before the largest servicer of subprime MBS has taken any significant action on clean-up calls. In August, Ocwen Financial announced...

Professional money managers see the U.S. economy on a sounder footing over the next 12 months, with expectations of little or no gain among mortgage-related assets over the next year, according to a new Fitch Ratings survey of fixed-income investors. Opinions about the credit conditions of mortgage investment vehicles in the near term mostly focused on modest, rather than severe, deterioration. In this segment, investors were mostly optimistic about prime mortgage-backed bonds. Overall, the survey found...

Pricing for jumbo mortgage-backed securities has improved in recent months, prompting an increase in issuance from some firms, but bank demand remains robust. “Although the difference has narrowed, our whole-loan sale execution for most jumbo loans continues to be more attractive than our securitization execution as a result of strong demand from banks,” Brett Nicholas, president of Redwood Trust, said this week during a call with investors. In the third quarter of 2014, Redwood issued ...

JPMorgan Chase had the largest amount of holdings of non-agency mortgage-backed securities – by far – among banks and thrifts at the end of the second quarter of 2014, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside Nonconforming Markets. Chase held $44.53 billion in non-agency MBS at the end of June, accounting for 34.5 percent of all non-agency MBS held by banks and thrifts. TD Bank, the second-ranked holder of non-agency MBS, had a ... [Includes one data chart]

Ginnie Mae servicing bumped up slightly in the third quarter after an uneventful prior quarter as FHA purchase activity continued to drag, according to Inside FHA Lending’s analysis of agency data. Servicing volume rose quarter over quarter by 1.4 percent. On an annual basis, volume increased 4.6 percent from the same period a year ago. Ginnie Mae servicers ended the quarter with a total of $1.48 trillion in unpaid principal balance, up from $1.46 trillion in the previous quarter. The top three servicers saw volume drop on both quarterly and year-over-year bases. Wells Fargo remained as top servicer of Ginnie Mae mortgage-backed securities, closing out the quarter with $422.4 million, down 0.8 percent from the previous quarter and down 0.6 percent from the prior year. The mega-servicer dominated the Ginnie market with a 28.6 percent market share. JPMorgan Chase carved out a 10.1 percent market share with ... [1 chart]

Nonbank mortgage servicers continued to gradually expand their share of the market during the third quarter of 2014, but the pace has clearly slowed. Nonbank institutions accounted for 27.2 percent of the $7.389 trillion of servicing controlled by the top 50 servicers in the industry, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance ranking and analysis. The nonbank share of the top 50 in combined servicing was up from 26.8 percent at the midway point in 2014 and 24.0 percent in September 2013. The nonbank expansion has slowed...[Includes two data charts]

Of the dozen or so mortgage company sales that have been announced over the past two months, just one has involved a servicing portfolio of any size and even that transaction – $1.5 billion of mortgage servicing rights owned by Continental Home Loans – was small. In today’s merger and acquisitions market, it’s all about building loan origination capacity as buyers such as Freedom Mortgage, LoanDepot and Guild Mortgage try to keep growing. Moreover, this thirst for production comes...