Ginnie Mae set records for new issuance of single-family mortgage-backed securities in 2015 and 2016, but production sagged last year, according to a new analysis and ranking by Inside FHA/VA Lending. The agency issued $443.20 billion of MBS backed by forward single-family mortgages in 2017, a 10.8 percent decline from the previous year. Including FHA reverse mortgages and that are not truncated, 2017 issuance fell 10.3 percent to $455.00 billion. Meanwhile, the private mortgage insurance business – based on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac MBS data – saw a smaller decline of 5.0 percent from 2016 to last year. The VA program generally held up better than the FHA program during the fourth quarter, when refinance lending was climbing. But the FHA had a better year overall despite some loss of market share in purchase-mortgage activity. Deliveries of FHA loans into ... [ Charts ]

Investors might be seeing better performance from the credit rating agencies these days. In two new reports, the Securities and Exchange Commission says ratings firms are more compliant and are utilizing information technology to a greater extent, all while remaining competitive, especially some of the smaller ones.

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]

The residential mortgage securitization industry could do better with a new due diligence working group that would help establish consensus and standards for third-party reviews (TPR), according to participants in a recent TPR roundtable hosted by Fitch Ratings. Fitch’s Residential MBS Group and TPR firms generally agreed on the need to set uniform standards for testing, grading and reporting compliance with federal and state regulatory requirements. There was consensus that the ...

Citadel Servicing Corp. continues to ready its first nonprime mortgage-backed security and received risk assessments from Morningstar Credit Ratings last week. The rating service evaluated Citadel as a lender and servicer, assigning it level-three rankings on a scale of one to four, with four being the worst. The assessment, along with a similar assessment by Fitch Ratings earlier this year, show that Citadel is taking steps toward issuing rated nonprime MBS. Sources close to ...

Providers of third-party due diligence services for non-agency mortgages are considering standardizing portions of the review and reporting process, according to Fitch Ratings. The rating service hosted a roundtable with a number of due diligence firms this month and provided some details on the meeting last week. “Participants agreed that increased focus on consensus where appropriate benefits the market as it mitigates pressures that third-party review firms may be ...

Arch Capital Group is set to issue a mortgage-insurance linked note transaction. Unlike two other re-insurance deals from a similar shelf, Bellemeade Re 2017-1 received credit ratings, expanding the investor base for the transaction. A mezzanine tranche of the deal received preliminary BBB ratings from Morningstar Credit Rat-ings this week. Mortgages delivered to the government-sponsored enterprises with an unpaid principal balance of $29.30 billion are included in the transaction ...

Citadel Servicing Corp. has talked about issuing its first non-prime MBS, possibly late this year, and this week cleared a hurdle when it received lender and servicer ratings from Morningstar. According to sources close to the company, the anticipated MBS – backed by newly originated loans that do not meet the qualified-mortgage test – could be as large as $250 million. Nomura is assisting Citadel with the deal, a source noted, adding that the bond may not actually hit the market until ...

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]

Fitch Ratings and Kroll Bond Rating Agency both recently took detailed looks at an airline ABS deal, Business Jet Securities 2017-1, and came to much different assessments of the transaction and its risks to investors. Fitch implied that KBRA did not properly evaluate the potential for losses. According to a presale report from KBRA, the BJETS notes are secured by payments on leases and loans secured by business jet aircraft. “The collateral portfolio consists of 181 business jets ...