Redwood Trust entered the single-family rental market this week by purchasing a stake in 5 Arches, a lender and asset manager. The move is part of a diversification strategy for Redwood, with officials at the real estate investment trust expecting growth among renters. Redwood acquired a 20.0 percent interest in 5 Arches with a one-year option to purchase the remaining 80 percent of the company. Redwood paid $10.0 million in cash for the minority stake and can buy the rest of the ...
PennyMac Financial Services re-started its jumbo mortgage origination operations in the first quarter with plans to return as an issuer of jumbo mortgage-backed securities. The nonbank locked $21.0 million in jumbo production as of the end of March. Ocwen Financial reported net income of $2.6 million for the first quarter of 2018, putting a halt to an extended streak of quarterly losses. Ocwen is the largest subprime mortgage servicer, by far, and the firm ... [Includes three briefs]
With overall production levels falling, there was a modest increase in several risk vectors of FHA and VA loans pooled in Ginnie Mae mortgage-backed securities during the first quarter of 2018.A new Inside FHA/VA Lending analysis shows the average credit score for FHA loans in Ginnie MBS issued during the first quarter was 671.1, the lowest level since Ginnie began reporting loan-level data on its securities. That was down from 673.2 in the fourth quarter and 679.2 a year ago. Part of the slide in FHA credit scores likely reflects the increased share of purchase mortgages, which typically have lower scores than refinance loans. The same thing happened in the VA market, where average credit scores fell 1.1 points to 707.8 in the first quarter. A year ago, the average VA score was 710.2. Debt-to-income ratios also drifted higher, suggesting more risk of default. Among FHA loans, the average DTI rose to ... [Charts]
Reverse mortgage lenders chalked up a win in Florida’s Third District Court of Appeal on the question of whether surviving spouses of borrowers who had taken out a Home Equity Conversion Mortgage loan also qualified as “borrowers” and, therefore, cannot be evicted from the property after the death of the borrower. The appellate court’s ruling contradicted two previous court rulings in Smith v. Reverse Mortgage Solutions, Inc. and Edwards v. Reverse Mortgage Solutions, Inc. Both rulings held that surviving spouses of deceased HECM borrowers also qualified as “borrowers” under the terms of the mortgage and, therefore, entitled to protection from eviction. However, in One West Bank, FSB v. Palmero, the appellate court changed course and outlined the conditions under which a lender could prove that “borrower” meant only the person who actually had taken out the reverse ...
“The opportunity for us is clear,” said Christopher Abate, president of Redwood. “Capital needs in this still emergent sector of housing finance continue to rise..."
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