Wells Fargo’s legal woes are continuing after a federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York last week ordered the company to face several lawsuits by institutional investors alleging MBS fraud. U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla ruled that Wells Fargo must face five lawsuits by a few dozen funds that are holding the bank liable for losses incurred after the MBS they purchased lost value due to the financial crisis. The plaintiffs include...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac saw substantial declines in new single-family business during the first quarter of 2017, but the purchase-mortgage side showed some life in March, according to a new analysis and ranking by Inside Mortgage Finance. The two government-sponsored enterprises guaranteed $218.22 billion of single-family mortgage-backed securities during the first three months of the year. That was down 27.1 percent from the fourth quarter total of $299.25 billion – the biggest quarterly flow in GSE business since the second quarter of 2013. The refinance market was...[Includes three data tables]

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executed various forms of credit-risk transfers last year that covered $548.0 billion of mortgages, a 30.4 percent increase over the amount covered by CRT activity in the previous year, according to a new report from the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The performance met the “scorecard” targets issued by their regulator. In total, the two government-sponsored enterprises transferred $17.9 billion of risk in 2016, most of it through their debt note programs. Fannie’s Connecticut Avenue Securities and Freddie’s Structured Agency Credit Risk programs accounted for 72.1 percent of risk transferred last year, the FHFA said. Reinsurance, the next biggest category, accounted...[Includes one data table]

Fitch Ratings updated its rating criteria last week for MBS backed by seasoned mortgages, including re-performing loans and nonperforming loans. The revisions to the criteria removed two standards that Fitch previously applied when analyzing seasoned mortgages. For re-performing mortgages originated before 2009, Fitch will no longer consider the original loan documentation. All mortgages will be treated as though they were originated with full documentation, even if the mortgages were originated with less than full documentation. “In recent years, the distinction in borrower behavior for loans with different original documentation levels has disappeared...

FHA-insured jumbo lending fell slightly in the fourth quarter of 2016 although year-over-year results were a lot better. Production of conforming-jumbo purchase and refinance loans insured by the FHA slipped 0.9 percent in the fourth quarter, a slight bump on the way to an annual jumbo origination total of $26.9billion. Year-over-year, FHA jumbo production was up 5.6 percent from 2015. Conforming-jumbo loans represented 9.8 percent of FHA loans securitized last year, according to data compiled by affiliated newsletter Inside Mortgage Finance. Purchase mortgages comprised 64.9 percent of jumbo loans insured by FHA in 2016 and 98.7 percent were fixed-rate loans. Nonbanks comprised the top five FHA jumbo lenders. Wells Fargo, which closed the year with $423.8 million in FHA jumbo originations, was in sixth place. Quicken Loans led the field with $802.5 million of ... [ Charts ]

Ginnie Mae production fell substantially in February from January as the government-insured lending market continued to lose steam in the first quarter of 2017. Ginnie mortgage-backed securities issuance fell 24.0 percent from January as fewer purchase and refinance loans were pooled for securitization, bringing February’s total issuance to just $32.2 billion. Year-over-year Ginnie MBS issuance, on the other hand, increased by 6.2 percent. The government-insured market set an all-time record of $545.0 billion in originations during 2016, a whopping 31.0 percent jump from the previous year. That total eclipsed previous records for originations of FHA, VA and rural housing loans guaranteed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, according to data compiled by affiliate Inside Mortgage Finance. In addition, government-insured lending accounted for a record ... [ 3 charts ]

As Democrats in Congress worked on reforms after the financial crisis, issuers of MBS and ABS repeatedly warned that regulatory uncertainty would hurt the market. With Republicans now looking to roll back parts of the Dodd-Frank Act, industry participants are pushing for risk-retention requirements to remain in place, again citing the potential impact of regulatory uncertainty. “It’s foolish to think that we would try to tear it all down,” said Howard Kaplan, a partner at the law firm of Deloitte & Touche, during this week’s SFIG Vegas conference. Among many other changes, the CHOICE Act from Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-TX, would repeal...

By creating liquidity in Ginnie Mae mortgage-backed securities, liquidity coverage ratio (LCR) policies have attracted lenders – mostly nonbanks – whose funding relies more on securitizations – toward FHA loan originations, according to a new paper published by academicians. The paper, “Nonbanks and Lending Standards in Mortgage Markets: The Spillovers from Liquidity Regulation,” maintains that such lenders approve more FHA loans because they can sell the loans easily, given the high liquidity of the securitized product. The greater liquidity in Ginnie MBS has resulted in higher market share and eased standards especially for nonbanks and lenders with less deposit funding. It also has led to tighter standards for conventional mortgages, which are eligible for government sponsored enterprise securitization, wrote Pedro Gete and Michael Reher, researchers in the ...

Rating services appear to be taking differing approaches to rating nonprime MBS backed by new originations. The first nonprime MBS from an affiliate of Invictus Capital Partners received preliminary AAA ratings from Kroll Bond Rating Agency, Morningstar Credit Ratings and S&P Global Ratings. Those three firms did not rate...

Weighing in on President Trump’s recent executive order related to the Dodd-Frank Act, analysts at Moody’s Investors Service said ditching the major mortgage regulations promulgated under the law would be negative for residential MBS unless it’s done carefully. “Any significant repeal of the Dodd-Frank Act’s mortgage-related provisions without effective alternatives would weaken residential RMBS credit quality because these provisions have strengthened the credit quality of mortgage originations, improved servicing practices and bolstered the credit integrity of RMBS structures,” the analysts said in a new report issued earlier this week. Their report then detailed...