An affiliate of Waterfall Asset Management is preparing to issue the first rated mortgage-backed security backed by non-agency reverse mortgages since 2007. Kroll Bond Rating Agency and Morningstar Credit Ratings placed preliminary AAA ratings on Cascade Funding Mortgage Trust 2018-RM2 this week. The deal is backed by 915 active jumbo reverse mortgages with a total unpaid principal balance of $571.8 million. The loans were originated between 2002 and 2008 and subsequently ...

An affiliate of TIAA, FSB issued a $319.7 million prime non-agency mortgage-backed security this week. Most of the loans were non-agency jumbos, in addition to a 3.5 percent share of mortgages eligible for sale to the government-sponsored enterprises. Griffin Funding, a wholesale lender focused on the west coast, said it partnered with one of the largest private equity buyers of non-qualified mortgages as a fully-delegated direct seller. The private-equity firm ... [Includes three briefs]

Wells Fargo was set to price its first post-crisis jumbo mortgage-backed security this week, marking a significant occasion for the sector. Wells is the largest originator of jumbo mortgages and the bank has been holding production in portfolio instead of issuing non-agency MBS. Company officials note that the $441.3 million Wells Fargo Mortgage Backed Securities 2018-1 Trust is in part a test of the MBS market by the bank. The deal is scheduled to close on Oct. 25. MBS issuers generally can't ...

Top-notch ratings assigned by three firms to a non-agency mortgage-backed security from Galton Funding prompted criticism from Fitch Ratings, which didn’t rate the issuance. The planned $452.7 million Galton Funding Mortgage Trust 2018-2 diverges from traditional non-agency MBS in its treatment of unpaid interest from delinquent mortgages. Fitch suggested that the change to the deal structure was so significant that it wouldn’t rate the transaction. Fitch noted that losses from unpaid ...

New Residential Investment is set to issue its first mortgage-backed security with non-qualified mortgages. The home loans were originated by New Penn Financial, a lender that New Residential acquired in July. DBRS and Fitch Ratings assigned preliminary AAA ratings to the planned $310.7 million New Residential Mortgage Loan Trust 2018-NQM1. The deal will include credit enhancement of 32.2 percent on the senior tranche. Mortgages backing the deal have an average loan age of ...

The latest prime non-agency mortgage-backed securities from Flagstar Bank and loanDepot include a mix of mortgages eligible for sale to the government-sponsored enterprises and non-agency jumbo mortgages. Flagstar included a further twist with its MBS, as the GSE-eligible mortgages are for investment properties. Such loans account for 77.9 percent of the planned $326.2 million Flagstar Mortgage Trust 2018-6RR. The issuance follows a $329.1 million deal that Flagstar issued in May ...

New production of non-agency MBS in the third quarter couldn’t keep pace with the record level reached in the previous period, but the market remained on track to top last year’s total issuance by the time 2018 ends. [Includes three data charts]

Wells Fargo is testing the prime jumbo MBS market for the first time since the financial crisis with a transaction that has features that differ from those issued by other banks in recent years.

Issuance trends for non-agency mortgage-backed securities stocked with newly-originated mortgages were mixed in the third quarter, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside Nonconforming Markets. Issuance of prime non-agency MBS declined significantly on a sequential basis in the third quarter. And for the first time, expanded-credit MBS issuance volume topped prime non-agency MBS activity. Some $3.58 billion of expanded-credit MBS was ... [Includes one data chart]

Mortgage Venture Partners, an aggregator, is acquiring a number of new non-agency products with plans to issue mortgage-backed securities. The first deals from MVP are expected by the first quarter of 2019. Jennifer McGuinness, head of aggregation and structured finance at MVP, said that in the past two years, the firm has focused on acquiring first-lien home-equity lines of credit from banks. “It’s a first lien on assets, giving the borrower the ability to tap their equity but also use it as ...