Ginnie Mae securitization of single-family mortgage securities backed by USDA loans fell in the first quarter of 2017. One-time leader Chase Home Finance was in fifth place after a whopping 31.6 percent decline in USDA activity and an even larger 87.4 percent drop year over year. A total of $4.6 billion in USDA loans were securitized in Ginnie Mae pools during the first three months of 2017, down 9.5 percent from the previous quarter. On the other hand, year-over-year securitization of USDA home loans rose 17.6 percent. Top-ranked Freedom Mortgage and 7th-ranked Ditech Financial each reported a tenfold increase in USDA volume year over year. Freedom Mortgage led the market with $887.3 million despite a 20.4 percent decline from the prior quarter Second-ranked PennyMac closed the quarter with $661.6 million of securitized USDA loans, while Wells Fargo reported a 9.3 percent decrease to ... [Chart]

Credit Suisse this week issued a $91.2 million non-agency MBS backed by seasoned FHA mortgages. CSMC 2017-FHA1 marked the first non-agency securitization of re-performing FHA mortgages since 2010. The deal received an A rating from DBRS and an A1 rating from Moody’s Investors Service with subordination of 16.50 percent on the senior tranche. Moody’s cited a number of credit “challenges,” including uncertainty about FHA insurance payouts for liquidated mortgages, insufficient information on loan modifications and weak representations and warranties. The mortgages in the deal have...

Ginnie Mae is making enhancements to a tool developed for MBS issuers to help them compare their performance with other issuers and to determine whether they are meeting agency expectations. Improvements to the Issuer Operation Performance Profile (IOPP) tool also would increase scoring transparency and make reports clearer and easier to understand, the agency said. The IOPP was introduced...

Purchase-mortgage lending saw a big drop in volume during the first quarter of 2017, but indicators suggest that the sector has been rebounding in recent months and will post a solid gain by the time the year is over. An estimated $205.0 billion of purchase mortgages were originated in the first quarter, a sizable 19.6 percent decline from the previous period. But with an even bigger 44.6 percent slump in refinance lending, purchase mortgages accounted for over half (53.2 percent) of total first-lien originations in the first three months of the year. It was...[Includes three data tables]

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac both announced new re-performing loan sale transactions this month as the two government-sponsored enterprises look for ways to shed illiquid assets. Fannie began marketing its first re-performing loan sale back in November to help reduce its balance sheet. The program continues to gain more traction with each sale. That first sale totaled $789.2 million in unpaid principal balance. Fannie has since announced...

Moody’s Rates Credit Suisse FHA Securitization Transaction. Moody’s assigned investment-grade ratings to Credit Suisse’s first securitization deal in 2017 backed by seasoned re-performing and performing, fully amortizing, fixed- and adjustable-rate mortgages insured by FHA. The deal is the first FHA-insured re-performing transaction since 2010, according to the rating agency. The collateral pool is comprised of 672 first-lien, fixed-rate loans and ARMs with a weighted average updated FICO score of 614 and loan-to-value ratio of 94.2 percent. Approximately 82.4 percent of the loans in the collateral pool were previously modified. Approximately 52.8 percent of the loans have been current for at least 24 months. Another 17.3 percent of the loans have been current for more than 12 months. Comments Sought on Various Information Collection Proposals. The Department of Housing and ...

An uptick in mortgage interest rates has reduced rate-term refinance volume but demand from borrowers for cash-out refis and home-equity loans appears to remain relatively strong. “When we look at the landscape for home-equity extraction, we see potential tailwinds from loan-to-value ratio and credit curing combined with slightly less stringent lending standards helping bolster borrower demand,” analysts at Wells Fargo Securities said in a report last week. Borrower LTV ratios have been helped...

The non-agency MBS market is set to receive a jolt as Wells Fargo plans to return to the space. “This year, one of our aspirations is to come back to the market with a couple of deals,” said Franklin Codel, a senior executive vice president of consumer lending at Wells. “We’re taking a look to make sure we can structure those properly … to try to test the market and see what we can do to bring some confidence back to the private-label market.” The official mentioned the plans late last week during an investor event hosted by Wells. Back in 2007, Wells ranked...

A unique disclosure Freddie Mac is providing in risk-sharing transactions can help provide MBS investors with forward-looking insight about mortgage performance, according to an analysis by Kroll Bond Rating Agency. Freddie started disclosing updated loan-to-value ratios for mortgages in its Structured Agency Credit Risk transactions in March 2016. On a quarterly basis, the government-sponsored enterprise discloses the estimated current LTVs based on Home Value Explorer (HVE), its proprietary automated valuation model. Connecticut Avenue Securities risk-sharing transactions from Fannie Mae don’t include a similar disclosure. KBRA noted...

Officials at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and their regulator are encouraged by – but by no means satisfied with – the progress made by the government-sponsored enterprises and their customers at expanding the credit box. “We do see an expansion of credit, steady growth in the 97 percent [loan to value ratio] programs and a little better distribution of credit scores,” said Bob Ryan, special advisor and acting deputy director at the Federal Housing Finance Agency during remarks at the secondary market conference sponsored by the Mortgage Bankers Association in New York this week. “But they are still skewed to the higher end more than in the past.” Fannie and Freddie are trying...