Ginnie Mae this week announced new guidelines to curb the churning of VA loans and high MBS prepayment speeds – the first in a series of measures developed by a joint Ginnie/VA task force to address the problem.

Consumer debt reached a new high at the end of the third quarter of 2017, surpassing levels seen in the run-up to the financial crisis and prompting concerns about the systemic risk to MBS and ABS investors posed by consumer leverage.

The average daily trading volume in agency MBS totaled $222.5 billion in October, a slight dip from the month prior, but the third best reading of the year, according to figures compiled by the Secu-rities Industry and Financial Markets Association.

There are many unpredictable variables and economic factors outside the control of the Federal Reserve, which makes it hard to project the impact of winding down the U.S. central bank’s historic investment in agency MBS. But economic experts at Fannie Mae are cautiously expressed anticipating greater volatility, an inevitable financial shock and potential changes in the Fed’s strategy as markets evolve.

Correspondent-based lending operations are accounting for a growing share of the FHA and VA home loans pooled in Ginnie Mae mortgage-backed securities, according to a new analysis and ranking by Inside FHA/VA Lending. In fact, correspondent originations are the only production channel to see year-over-year growth in FHA and VA business through the first nine months of 2017. Retail and wholesale-broker production is down for both FHA and VA loans. Correspondent programs are most dominant in the FHA market, perhaps reflecting a preference among large producers to have recourse to a primary-market lender if the government later finds defects in how the loan was originated. Correspondents accounted for 48.7 percent of FHA loans pooled in Ginnie MBS during the first nine months of the year, up from 43.1 percent in all of 2016. Volume was up 1.7 percent from the ... [Charts]

A new net tangible benefit test for ensuring that a VA borrower benefits from a refinancing appears to be the obvious solution to the VA’s churning problem, according to analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML). Modeled after the FHA net tangible benefit test, the test seems to be a “foregone conclusion” for VA, analysts said. A Ginnie Mae/VA task force is currently working to resolve the problem, which is causing rapid prepayments in Ginnie mortgage-backed securities and raising serious doubts as to whether aggressive refinancing truly benefits veterans and servicemembers. “There is a critical need to ensure that veteran borrowers are not harmed by repeated refinancings through VA’s Interest Rate Reduction Refinance Loan program,” said Mortgage Bankers Association President/CEO David Stevens during a recent appearance before the House Financial Services Committee. IRRRLs, also referred to ...

The Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Veterans Affairs have taken additional steps to provide relief to homeowners in disaster areas hit by hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria. This week, the FHA issued policy waivers in storm-ravaged Puerto Rico and fire-stricken counties in California, allowing damage inspections to be completed beginning Oct. 24. FHA currently requires servicers to perform a damage inspection following the close of an “incident period” as determined by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. An incident period is the period For mortgages in disaster areas that have not closed or are pending endorsement, lenders must follow FHA’s guidelines on inspection and repair escrow requirements for loans in such areas. FHA believes that situations in certain jurisdictions in Puerto Rico and California have stabilized and further damage to ...

Default rates could increase for certain types of MBS and ABS as some borrowers experience higher debt-to-income ratios, according to Moody’s Investors Service. The rating service pointed to new results from the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances conducted every three years. The survey showed a modest increase between 2013 and 2016 in the median ratio of debt payments to family incomes among debtors in the 20.0 percent to 39.9 percent income percentile ...

Ginnie Mae issuers rode a wave of purchase-mortgage lending to deliver $120.46 billion of forward mortgages during the third quarter of 2017, the highest three-month volume for the year, according to a new analysis and ranking by Inside FHA/VA Lending. Third-quarter volume was up 9.6 percent from the April-June cycle. The data excluded FHA reverse mortgages and loan amounts are truncated in Ginnie’s mortgage-backed securities disclosures. Without those limitations, total Ginnie MBS issuance rose 9.5 percent to $123.37 billion in the third quarter. Purchase mortgages were the engine behind the growth. Ginnie issuers securitized $85.35 billion of purchase loans in the third quarter, falling just short of the record $85.41 billion set in the third quarter of last year. Although most Ginnie purchase loans (58.7 percent) were FHA loans, the biggest increase was in such loans guaranteed by the ... [Charts]

An estimated 9.8 percent of Ginnie Mae’s business may be potentially at risk due to hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, according to data released recently by the agency. The data represent the number of Ginnie loans and their unpaid principal balance amounts in presidentially declared disaster areas in Texas, Florida, Georgia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. A total of 1.07 million mortgage loans with an unpaid principal balance of $184.5 billion have been affected. Ginnie Mae’s current mortgage-backed securities portfolio totals $1.9 trillion. The data only refer to the geographic locations of all affected properties underlying loans in Ginnie MBS pools and do not indicate the percentage of those that may have sustained damage during a storm. Hurricane Irma had the highest share of affected loans, 6 percent, while Harvey and Maria accounted for 3 percent and 1 percent, respectively. Irma caused the ...