The Structured Finance Industry Group this week put more flesh on the bones of its proposed deal-agent role in future non-agency MBS and introduced a plan for improved communications among MBS investors. The fifth edition of SFIG’s RMBS 3.0 Green Paper adds recommendations on data standardization, enforcement mechanisms for breaches of deal terms and materiality standards. The new proposal on bondholder communications was drafted...

Risk-sharing transactions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have delivered strong returns for investors in the past year, but that could change under the monetary policies of the Trump administration, according to analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. The analysts recently dialed down their recommendation on the risk-sharing transactions issued by the two government-sponsored enterprises to “underweight.” “Trump’s victory paves...

Origination of commercial mortgages could reach $515 billion this year, a slight improvement over 2015, but more lenders – life insurance companies and banks, in particular – are keeping the loans on their books, which doesn’t bode well for CMBS issuance. It’s the same conundrum facing the jumbo residential market: plenty of lending, but not so much in the way of securitization. As Inside MBS & ABS reported recently, issuance of CMBS increased...

New non-agency MBS issued in 2017 will likely include more diversified collateral and feature some structural changes, analysts at Moody’s Investors Service said in a new report this week. The rating service projected that non-agency prime jumbo volume will remain steady in 2017, while issuers will continue to explore non-traditional asset types, such as re-performing and non-performing loans, reverse mortgages, non-qualified mortgages and nonprime transactions. “Although prime jumbo deals will start to include loans with slightly lower FICOs and higher loan-to-value ratios than those loans included in 2016 transactions, collateral quality will remain...

Back in late August, Ginnie Mae promised the mortgage industry that it would release a new and improved “acknowledgement agreement,” a document that defines collateral rights tied to agency servicing. But now it’s December, and no such document has surfaced. “It’s in legal,” an agency spokeswoman said, apologizing for the repeated delays. Meanwhile, there is new industry chatter that the revised acknowledgement agreement may not see the light of day for ...

The one weak spot in the mortgage market during the third quarter was in traditional jumbo originations, a trend that was reinforced by a significant increase in production of agency mortgages in high-cost markets that exceeded $417,000. An estimated $101.0 billion of non-agency jumbo home loans were originated during the third quarter, down 1.9 percent from the previous quarter. At the same time, production of conforming-jumbo mortgages – loans greater than $417,000 that were securitized by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae – jumped 27.7 percent from the second to the third quarter. Some of the disparity is...[Includes three data tables]

President-elect Donald Trump this week officially nominated former Republican primary rival Dr. Ben Carson to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development – a move that elicited mixed responses from industry and government quarters. Carson, a pediatric neurosurgeon, eclipsed possible contenders for the HUD job, including Scott Brown, former U.S. senator from Massachusetts; Ed DeMarco, former acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency; Rick Lazio, former Republican congressman from New York; Blaine Leutkemeyer, another Republican lawmaker from Missouri; Brian Montgomery, former FHA commissioner and HUD assistant secretary; and Pamela Patenaude, president of the Terwilliger Foundation for Housing America’s Families. Carson’s nomination is...

New production of agency single-family MBS in November was down 8.2 percent from the previous month, according to a preliminary Inside MBS & ABS analysis. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae issued a combined $134.70 billion of single-family MBS in November, the lowest monthly total since July. A decline wasn’t unexpected: the housing market is on the downslope of its seasonal trend and rising mortgage interest rates are taking some of the steam out of the refinance market. What is a little unusual is...[Includes two data tables]

Shortly after being nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to be his Treasury secretary, investment banker Steve Mnuchin midweek dropped a bombshell on the mortgage market: Ending the conservatorships of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would be a top priority. For the most part, the mortgage industry cheered the news, believing that at the very least, Mnuchin would preserve the federal guaranty on existing MBS and into the future. In fact, the market seems to be betting on it. But now comes...

The Structured Finance Industry Group published recommendations this week for loan-level data disclosure for ABS backed by unsecured consumer loans originated by marketplace lenders. The proposal was the first in a planned series of “Green Papers” from the trade group that will seek to support “responsible growth” in the issuance of ABS from marketplace lenders. “The best practices initiative, rooted in supporting the responsible growth of securitization in the marketplace sector, will seek to identify a framework of standards and work to identify gaps in application or understanding,” SFIG said. The trade group said...