The outstanding supply of home mortgage debt – even what had been the fastest-growing sector of the market – ebbed in the first quarter of 2015. The Federal Reserve late last week reported the supply of home mortgage debt outstanding fell to $9.855 trillion as of the end of March. That was down 0.3 percent from December 2014 and reversed a modest expansion of the servicing market over the second half of last year. While banks, thrifts and credit unions managed...[Includes two data tables]

DBRS and Standard & Poor’s separately issued revised criteria for rating non-agency mortgage-backed securities in recent weeks. DBRS will give slightly more credit to jumbo MBS due to strong performance in recent years, while S&P adjusted modeling relating to home price trends. DBRS noted that from 2010 through the end of April, $32.1 billion in jumbo MBS had been issued, with only one deal taking any losses to date, a 0.04 percent loss. “Positive loan attributes ...

A final rule issued by the Securities and Exchange Commission regarding third-party due diligence providers and rating services takes effect on June 15. The rule is set to prompt a number of changes in the non-agency mortgage-backed security market, largely targeting transparency. For MBS that receive ratings, public disclosure of results from third-party due diligence reviews will be required before a deal is priced. The disclosure requirement even applies to deals issued as private placements, which is the current practice for jumbo MBS ...

The dreary state of the prime jumbo mortgage securitization market will continue for the short term but there’s a silver lining around the bend, according to an analysis by rating agency DBRS. Despite last year’s downturn, the jumbo prime market has seen steady growth in the last five years. In 2010, Sequoia Mortgage ended the drought in the non-agency MBS with a $478.1 million deal backed by newly originated prime jumbo loans. There have been...

Morningstar Credit Ratings may increase its presence in the residential MBS market after rating its first re-securitization last week and revising its rating criteria for new non-agency MBS. The push follows Morningstar’s initial effort to rate non-agency MBS in 2012, which didn’t generate any business. The company has rated commercial MBS and single-family rental securities. Last week, the rating service published...

A pilot jumbo loan program between the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago and Redwood Trust has grown to include three more FHLBanks, with the potential to expand to more. Mortgage Partnership Finance Direct is specifically a high-balance loan product that connects the Mortgage Partnership Finance conduit program with Redwood Trust to offer access to private capital when selling fixed-rate mortgages in the secondary market. Eric Schambow, senior vice president and director of the Chicago FHLBank’s MPF Program, said...

Real estate investment trusts and new investors in the mortgage business could provide funding for nonconforming lending, but securitization remains challenged, according to various experts at the recent secondary market conference sponsored by the Mortgage Bankers Association. The non-agency mortgage-backed securities market is very subdued, said Laurie Goodman, director of the Housing Finance Policy Center at the Urban Institute. Issuance has been running at about ...

The strong performance of jumbo mortgages originated in recent years is due to more than just focusing on borrowers with healthy credit scores, loan-to-value ratios and debt-to-income ratios, according to Moody’s Investors Service. The analysts said “soft” qualitative underwriting factors play a major role in jumbo performance. Qualitative factors considered by jumbo lenders include the absence of negative events in a borrower’s credit history, the number of unblemished lines of credit and ...

JPMorgan Chase and Credit Suisse are coming to market with separate jumbo mortgage-backed securities that have some sharp differences in terms of collateral. The $379.78 million JPMorgan Mortgage Trust 2015-3 includes some unique characteristics such as a handful of loans with combined loan-to-value ratios above 80.0 percent and some interest-only mortgages. While the average combined LTV ratio for mortgages to be included in the deal is 69.9 percent, 15 mortgages ...

Servicing on four non-agency mortgage-backed securities will be transferred from Ocwen Financial to Select Portfolio Servicing, according to Moody’s Investors Service. Investors in the MBS voted to transfer servicing on the 3,490 mortgages in the deals. The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating Ocwen and potentially other servicers regarding the use of collection agents. In a quarterly report filed last week, Ocwen said it received a letter from ... [Includes five briefs]