Sales of mortgages and non-agency mortgage-backed securities helped reduce the government-sponsored enterprises’ exposure to nonprime mortgages in 2016. As of the end of the year, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac held a combined $141.45 billion in purchased/guaranteed nonprime mortgages and nonprime MBS. The holdings were down by 5.8 percent from the end of the third quarter and 22.0 percent below the level at the end of 2015 ... [Includes one data chart]

Parkside Lending announced this week that it’s offering a new low-downpayment jumbo mortgage product that includes an option for lender-paid mortgage insurance or borrower-paid MI. The new Jumbo III product joins other wholesale jumbo offerings from Parkside, including mortgages with combined loan-to-value ratios up to 95.0 percent with no requirement for MI. Blackstone Group increased its presence in the market for rental properties by launching Finance ... [Includes two briefs]

The main risks in making mortgages to foreign nationals: the borrower’s lack of credit history and issues tied to income verification.

Mortgage delinquencies in the fourth quarter of 2016 hit their highest level of the year, erasing declines from the previous quarter, according to the Inside Mortgage Finance Large Servicer Delinquency Index. The foreclosure rate continued to decline, hitting levels last seen in 2007. Among the servicers tracked by the index, the total mortgage delinquency rate was 5.05 percent as of the end of the fourth quarter. The rate was at 5.54 percent at the end of 2015 and declined each quarter until the most recent period. Each delinquency bucket increased...[Includes one data table]

Mark Filler, who founded Jordan and served as its CEO, was named president of Finance of America Commercial.

Mariner is an investment advisor that manages roughly $13.5 billion in assets...

Contributors to deal include Quicken Loans and United Shore Financial Services, both top-ranked nonbank originators...

Phoenix Capital is offering a private jumbo MSR portfolio sized at $216 million…

Only 69.1 percent of home mortgages originated in 2016 wound up in agency or non-agency MBS issued last year, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis. It was the second-lowest annual mortgage-securitization rate on record, and the third year in a row that the rate failed to reach the 70.0 percent mark. The low securitization rate mostly results from the fact that relatively few jumbo mortgages get out of bank portfolios and into the non-agency MBS market. According to Inside Mortgage Finance estimates, some $381.0 billion of jumbo mortgages were originated...[Includes one data table]

The bulk of the contributions for the MBS were aggregated by Invictus’ Verus Mortgage Capital affiliate. Servicing will be handled by Specialized Loan Servicing.