Analysts at Morningstar Credit Ratings have begun to see non-agency single-property investor loans materialize with a new twist: less dependence on the borrower’s ability to repay and more reliance on the cash flow stream of rental income. “The majority of loans made to landlords backed by single properties are underwritten as consumer loans, not business-purpose loans. The lender will scrutinize the borrower’s credit, income and assets,” RMBS analysts Brian Grow, Becky Cao and Olgay Cangur said in a new report. Also, rental income is included as part of the borrower’s overall income when calculating the borrower’s personal debt/income ratio and, thus, the probability of default. “Recently, Morningstar has been presented...

The California Supreme Court late last week issued a ruling in a case where a borrower challenged the foreclosure of a loan that was included in a non-agency MBS issued in 2007. The court allowed the borrower’s claims to proceed, which could prompt a significant increase in foreclosure-related litigation for California mortgages in non-agency MBS. An opinion authored by Kathryn Werdegar, an associate justice of the California Supreme Court, stresses that the court’s ruling in Yvanova v. New Century Mortgage is narrow. “We hold only that a borrower who has suffered a non-judicial foreclosure does not lack standing to sue for wrongful foreclosure based on an allegedly void assignment merely because he or she was in default on the loan and was not a party to the challenged assignment,” Werdegar said. The ruling left...

Mortgage originators selling loans into MBS last week likely were hit with “pair-off” fees from secondary-market investors who were expecting delivery of higher-yielding mortgages, a proposition complicated by the sudden downdraft in rates. As one secondary market executive noted: “A forward sale into an MBS is not a perfect hedge. Then again, nothing is a perfect hedge.” Originators that fund billions of dollars each quarter use...

Issuers and investors involved in the securitization market are pushing the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision to revise its proposed capital standards for “simple, transparent and comparable” securitization. The BCBS issued a proposal in November and the comment period closed this month. The Structured Finance Industry Group reiterated concerns about international regulatory efforts that will create a “patchwork” of standards and limit securitization, while others pushed back on the exclusion of synthetic transactions from the proposed criteria for STC transactions. “We continue...

The Bank of New York Mellon, acting as trustee, has petitioned the New York State Supreme Court for instructions for paying out Bank of America’s $8.5 billion cash settlement with Countrywide MBS investors, which could potentially alter the order of payment, according to an analysis by Moody’s Investors Service. The governing MBS documents and the settlement agreement are complicated, nuanced and ambiguous, the rating service noted. Without guidance from the state court, BNYM, as trustee for 530 RMBS trusts, could decide on a payout that could favor certain bondholders unexpectedly. The massive payout has been delayed...

The first-time homebuyer share of home purchases increased for the second consecutive month in January, according to results from the latest Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance HousingPulse Tracking Survey. The increase is part of a seasonal trend where first-time homebuyers take market share from current homeowners as part of the spring homebuying season, though there could be some constraints on first-time homebuyer activity this year. First-time buyers accounted for 35.9 percent of home purchases in January, based on a three-month moving average. Their share increased from a trough of 35.1 percent in November. The current homeowner share of home purchases in that time declined from 49.2 percent to 47.8 percent, with investors also gaining some share from current homeowners. Tom Popik, research director for Campbell Surveys, noted...

A long-expected correction in MBS prices was put on hold this week as interest rates took another dive and concerns continued to mount about China’s stagnant economy and weakening oil prices. As Inside MBS & ABS went to press late this week, the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury was at 1.61 percent, the lowest it’s been in roughly four years. The volatility in the market was sparking...

Investors in the secondary market are continuing to shy away from mortgages with so-called TRID errors – even minor ones – taking the advice of legal counsel and due diligence providers who are telling them to stay clear because of assignee liability issues. Late last week, senior executives from the Structured Finance Industry Group traveled to Washington to meet CFPB Director Richard Cordray, but one official familiar with the get-together said the regulator conveyed a message of “Thanks for coming in, but we don’t think there’s a problem.” For now, most of the concern about a stalled secondary market has focused...

Non-agency mortgage-backed security issuers and investors continue to work to make adjustments that will help increase activity in the market. Among the issues under discussion are representations and warranties and the use of a deal agent or transaction manager. “Industry participants are now focusing on clearly identifying which parties to a transaction are covered by the current rep-and-warrant framework, and to which activities it is applicable,” according to a recent report ...

The outlook for publicly traded real estate investment trusts that invest in agency MBS and related products is starting to improve, in part, because competing investments are looking ugly. That might seem like a small consolation prize for REITs, but several are posting decent earnings, even though the book value of their common stock is relatively weak. Meanwhile, while certain investors shun their stocks, many companies have engaged...