The ABS East conference this week had its highest attendance in the 24-year history of the event, with investors looking for MBS and ABS that offer attractive yields. Nearly 5,000 people registered to attend the conference this year, according to Jade Friedensohn, a managing director of the structured finance division of Information Management Network, which produced the event in Miami Beach. Attendance in the previous two years was dampened by a hurricane and concerns about the Zika virus ...

Issuance of expanded-credit MBS is booming but total volume remains relatively small as major investors continue to avoid the sector. Investors such as Blackrock and PIMCO are looking for improvements to representations and warranties, according to industry participants. Eric Kaplan, director of the housing finance program at the Milken Institute’s Center for Financial Markets, said some big investors prefer to acquire expanded-credit loans, such as non-qualified mortgages, as whole loans ...

Increased competition in the non-qualified mortgage market could reduce interest rates paid by borrowers and slow the sector’s speedy prepayment rates, said S&P Global Ratings. Non-QM loans, the fastest growing segment of the residential MBS market, repay quickly, often within one year of origination. S&P noted the conditional prepayment rate of non-QM loans is about 35 percent, while the rate for non-agency prime jumbos ranges from 5 percent to 15 percent. “The predominant reason to ...

Most of the major MBS investor groups added to their holdings during the second quarter of 2018, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis. [Includes two data charts.]

The average daily trading volume in agency MBS fell to just $188.4 billion in August, the lowest reading of the year and a possible sign of trouble ahead, according to figures compiled by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association.

The Blackstone Group in the past few months has taken a hard look at the operations of Incenter, a portfolio company it controls that has diversified businesses that include loan and MBS trading/investments as well as servicing brokerage, according to market sources familiar with the situation.

Ginnie Mae issuers produced $36.68 billion of new single-family mortgage-backed securities last month, a modest 5.0 percent gain from July, according to a new Inside FHA/VA Lending analysis and ranking. Through the first eight months of the year, Ginnie issuance was down 11.0 percent from the same period in 2017. The MBS figures do not include FHA home-equity conversion mortgages, and loan amounts are truncated to the lowest $1,000. Purchase mortgages accounted for 75.6 percent of new issuance in August, although volume was up just 1.9 percent from July’s level. On a year-to-date basis, the purchase-mortgage share rose from 65.7 percent in 2017 to 70.0 percent for the first eight months of this year. Total volume, however, was down 5.1 percent. The refinance market has been more wobbly. As of the end of August, refi volume totaled $65.87 billion, down 26.2 percent from the ... [Chart]

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac continued to report declining balances in their retained mortgage portfolios during the second quarter – with a few wrinkles. [Includes one chart.]

As a group, commercial banks and thrifts ended the second quarter of 2018 with slightly reduced holdings of single-family MBS, although several institutions raised their stakes in the market significantly, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis and ranking. [Includes two data charts.]

The average daily trading volume in agency MBS fell to $204.1 billion in July, the weakest reading of the year, according to the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association.