FCI Lender Services, the nation’s largest private-money servicer, is sticking its toe in the lending market by teaming up with Blackrock Mortgage Investment to extend credit to investors in single-family rental properties. This month, the Anaheim, CA-based FCI rolled out two SFR products and one tied to investors looking to buy nonperforming mortgages. According to a rate sheet provided to Inside Mortgage Trends, one of the SFR products requires...

First Republic Bank has contributed at least 21.3 percent of the loans that have been included in jumbo mortgage-backed securities issued in the first nine months of this year, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside Nonconforming Markets. The bank was identified as having contributed $2.18 billion into jumbo MBS issued in the first three quarters of 2015, including $619.19 million in the third quarter. First Republic’s contributions to jumbo MBS issued in the third quarter alone topped the contributions of any other lender in the first nine months of the year. Jumbo MBS issuers and rating services generally disclose...[Includes two data tables]

New securitizations backed by commercial mortgages declined during the third quarter of 2015, but the market at the nine-month mark has nearly matched total issuance for all of last year, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis. Some $49.62 billion of income-property mortgages were securitized during the third quarter of 2015, down 15.8 percent from the second quarter. However, with $162.18 billion of commercial mortgage securities issuance through the first nine months of 2015, the market is poised to reach its highest annual volume since the financial crisis when the year ends. Both sides of the market – non-agency CMBS and agency multifamily MBS – saw...[Includes one data table]

Beach Point Capital Management early next week will issue a roughly $75 million MBS collateralized by nonprime mortgages that were originated over the past year by Citadel Loan Servicing, Irvine, CA, according to officials briefed on the transaction. As Inside MBS & ABS went to press this week, certain details on the security were beginning to leak out, including the fact that Nomura Securities “is running the book” on the deal, said one source. Wells Fargo will be the custodian and backup servicer. The privately held Citadel will continue to service the underlying loans. The yield on the private-place bond is...

Banks and nonbanks, in general, are doing a better job of servicing “challenged” mortgages and MBS these days, according to a new report from Fitch Ratings. However, concerns remain. Fitch noted that residential servicing costs “continue to rise in concert with increased compliance focus and enhanced regulatory scrutiny.” Moreover, “Higher regulatory capital requirements may become a factor too, especially for smaller servicers.” Over the past two years, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae have all ushered...

Freddie Mac will begin creating new “mirror” securities that will play a key role in how the government-sponsored enterprise will allow investors to exchange existing Freddie participation certificates for new single securities. The mirror securities will be held in a Federal Reserve account and will not increase the outstanding principal balance of Freddie MBS, the GSE explained in an update on the exchange program. The mirror securities will track existing Freddie MBS but substitute a 55-day payment cycle for Freddie’s current 45-day cycle. When an investor exchanges part or all of an existing 45-day security for a new 55-day single security that’s interchangeable with Fannie Mae single securities, Freddie will pay...

The Federal Reserve’s zero interest rate policy lives to die another day, as the Fed’s Open Market Committee opted this week to hold the line on a rate increase, as it has since December 2008, leaving investors and other market participants to try to read the tea leaves as best they can. “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,” the FOMC said in its much-anticipated statement, issued mid-week. In making its decision about whether to raise the target range at its next meeting, scheduled for mid-December, the Fed said...

While a number of jumbo lenders reduced their reliance on mortgage brokers in the years after the financial crisis, Primary Capital Mortgage has sourced a large share of its production from brokers. And the lender has earned strong assessments from rating services in the process. Moody’s Investors Service said 71 percent of the jumbo mortgages PCM originated between the second quarter of 2014 and the first quarter of 2015 were through brokers. The lender originated $114 million in jumbos in that span. The majority of PCM’s originations are agency mortgages. The rating service said...

Questions from Inside Nonconforming Markets prompted the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to acknowledge last week that its director misspoke during a speech at the Mortgage Bankers Association’s annual convention. In arguing that the CFPB’s ability-to-repay rule hasn’t caused a significant reduction in mortgage originations, Richard Cordray said last week that “most” jumbo loans are non-qualified mortgages. While comprehensive data on the non-QM share of jumbo mortgages is not available, a number of data sources suggest that most jumbos are in fact QMs, not non-QMs. Three of the five largest jumbo lenders told...

A typical jumbo mortgage-backed security is stronger in many ways than the non-agency MBS-like transaction Freddie Mac issued at the end of July, according to a recent analysis by Andrew Davidson & Co. However, the Freddie deal benefitted from a wrap provided by the government-sponsored enterprise. Freddie Mac Whole Loan Securities Trust Series 2015 SC01 was backed by mortgages with an unpaid principal balance of $302.96 million. The risk-sharing transaction was structured as a cash securitization with $278 million in senior certificates guaranteed by Freddie and approximately $23 million in unguaranteed subordinate certificates. Andrew Davidson compared...