Redwood Trust is looking to acquire more jumbo mortgages and many of the nonbanks the firm works with could use some financing, making Redwood’s new funding initiative a good match. During the second quarter of 2018, Redwood deployed $40.0 million in customized financing for nonbanks that deliver jumbos to the real estate investment trust. The initiative is part of a diversification effort. Dashiell Robinson, president of Redwood, noted that the REIT isn’t acting as a ...

Flagstar Bank looks to have found an agreeable due diligence sampling rate for loans in its prime non-agency mortgage-backed securities. The company is preparing to issue a $476.1 million prime non-agency MBS, according to presale reports published last week. It’s the second issuance in a row from Flagstar where 30.0 percent of the loans were subject to third-party reviews. Only 20.0 percent of the loans in a $704.1 million deal Flagstar issued in April were subject to ...

Rating services are divided on whether the income documentation used by Caliber Home Loans qualifies as full documentation. The differences are apparent in a pending $342.6 million issuance from Lone Star Funds, which is stocked with mortgages from Caliber. According to Fitch Ratings, Lone Star is the only current issuer of nonprime MBS to keep mortgages with nontraditional income-documentation out of its deals. The rating service said 99.4 percent of the dollar volume of the loans ...

Fitch views prepayments as a positive credit factor…

Nonprime mortgages are performing better than expected and prepayment rates remain elevated, according to industry analysts. Fitch Ratings noted that 60+ day delinquency rates on nonprime mortgages in post-crisis mortgage-backed securities rated by the firm were less than 4.00 percent as of August. “The performance of Fitch-rated nonprime transactions has outperformed initial projections,” the rating service said. The average conditional prepayment rate ... [Includes one data chart]

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau should remove the cap on debt-to-income ratios that applies to certain qualified mortgages, according to a proposal by the Housing Finance Policy Center. Such a move could boost non-agency lending, according to industry analysts. The CFPB is currently assessing whether changes are needed for QM standards, including potentially addressing the so-called government-sponsored enterprise patch. The patch allows mortgages with DTI ratios ...

The 10-year anniversary of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac entering conservatorship prompted an effusion of words regarding housing-finance reform and a draft of a new bipartisan bill in the House. It remains to be seen whether any of the talk turns into action in Congress, though administrative reform via the Federal Housing Finance Agency and the Treasury Department remains a possibility. Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-TX, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee ...

The Securities and Exchange Commission levied $16.3 million in penalties against Moody’s Investors Service last week to settle charges involving internal control failures and failures to clearly define and consistently apply credit rating symbols. The bulk of the fine relates to more than 650 non-agency mortgage-backed security ratings issued between 2010 and 2013 that subsequently had to be corrected. Sens. Mark Warner, D-VA, and Mike Rounds ... [Includes four briefs]

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]

Home Equity Conversion Mortgage originations fell dramatically in the second quarter, raising the possibility of a long reverse-mortgage winter in 2018, according to an Inside FHA/VA Lending analysis of HECM data. HECM production fell a whopping 40.9 percent in the second quarter from the previous period. Total HECM originations stood at $8.6 billion by the six-month mark, down 8.3 percent from the prior year. Traditional HECMs, which exclude purchases and refinances, accounted for 80.5 percent of FHA-insured reverse mortgages originated during the first half of 2018. The amount of funds available at loan origination for the first six months totaled $4.7 billion. Analysts blame the low HECM originations on the new lower Principal Limit Factors (PLFs) for HECMs, which became effective in FY 2018. Under the HECM final rule issued last year by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, principal limits [Chart]