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...

Secondary market gains headed south in the final three months of 2016, and so far it’s not looking too bright for the first quarter of 2017, which has about four weeks to go before it’s a wrap. According to a new report from Piper Jaffray, gain-on-sale margins declined to an average of 94 basis points in the fourth quarter, compared to a more robust 106 bps in the third. Piper said GOS is currently tracking at about 88 basis points. The research firm’s coverage universe includes...

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 ...

It is two months into 2017, and compliance attorneys are still trying to discern some of the finer nuances of applying the Dodd-Frank Act’s risk-retention requirements to various sectors of the secondary market beyond residential MBS. One such area is structured aircraft portfolio transactions. In a recently issued white paper, attorneys from the Clifford Chance law firm and four other U.S. law firms looked at applying the rules to a typical issuance of securities by a newly formed special-purpose vehicle that owns (or will own) a portfolio of aircraft and related leases. They note...

FHA and VA borrowers took on slightly greater payment obligations in 2016 than they have in previous years, according to a new analysis and servicer ranking by Inside FHA/VA Lending. The average debt-to-income ratio for FHA loans securitized in Ginnie Mae mortgage-backed securities last year was 40.4 percent, up about half a percentage point from 2015. The average VA DTI ratio nudged up slightly to 38.3 percent. Average credit scores in the FHA program drifted slightly lower, while climbing 1.9 points for VA loans. The differences in credit quality between the two programs remained substantial: the VA attracts borrowers with higher credit scores and lower DTI ratios who take on larger loans. Some 36.3 percent of VA loans backing Ginnie MBS issued last year had credit scores of 740 and up, while just 13.2 percent of FHA loans fell in that category. Meanwhile, 67.1 percent of FHA loans had ...

In 2016, retail sales conducted over the Internet boomed while traffic at America’s shopping malls remained tepid, raising new concerns about CMBS deals where the collateral includes a troubled “anchor” tenant. According to figures compiled by Morningstar, roughly $49 billion of CMBS transactions are backed by regional malls. When the anchor closes, it raises all sorts of concerns about whether the entire mall will be able to survive. (Earlier this year, Sears and Macy’s separately announced they will close a total of 218 stores.) “As online shopping, the diminishing importance of department stores, and store closures all contribute...

Final Civil Action: Primary Residential Mortgage. The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of the Inspector General has recommended that the department’s Office of Legal Counsel acknowledged $3.13 million of a $5 million settlement agreed to by Primary Residential Mortgage is due HUD. Primary agreed last September to a $5 million settlement with the Department of Justice to resolve allegations of failing to comply with FHA requirements in connection with its origination, underwriting and endorsement of 100 FHA-insured loans. Primary’s settlement is neither an admission of guilt nor assumption of any liability that may arise from the flawed transactions, the IG said. As of Oct. 4, 2016, the settlement amount due HUD had been paid in full. Moody’s Downgrades $243 Million of FHA/VA Residential MBS. Moody’s Investors Service has downgraded the ...

Among the many impediments to a revival of the non-agency MBS market is what potential investors see as a lack of transparency from issuers. To address the issue, the Institute for Financial Transparency has created a “transparency label” that will identify non-agency MBS that include adequate disclosures. Richard Field, director of the IFT, detailed the Transparency Label Initiative in a recent study published by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners and the Center for Insurance Policy and Research. “While there has been a significant amount of activity surrounding disclosure for structured finance securities, these securities still remain...

Moody’s Investors Service agreed to a $863.79 million settlement with the Department of Justice, 21 states and Washington, DC, late last week. The settlement focused on rating activities between 2004 and 2010 involving residential MBS and collateralized debt obligations. According to the settlement, Moody’s used an internal ratings model for most tranches of certain residential MBS that was more lenient than its published guidelines, allowing for lower credit enhancement levels than what the published guidelines required. The internal model was based...