The jumbo market is dominated by retail lenders to a greater extent than either conventional-conforming production or government-insured lending, according to a new analysis by Inside Nonconforming Markets. A group of 19 top jumbo lenders reported $92.45 billion in jumbo originations through their retail operations during the first half of 2016. That represented 76.8 percent of the $120.37 billion in total jumbo production for the group. The 19 lenders accounted...[Includes one data table]

The latest jumbo mortgage-backed security from Redwood Trust includes some differences compared with the two jumbo MBS the firm issued earlier this year. The $343.16 million deal includes loans from many lenders and contributions from a Federal Home Loan Bank program. Sequoia Mortgage Trust 2016-3 received preliminary AAA ratings from Kroll Bond Rating Agency and Moody’s Investors Service. The MBS will include...

Industry participants looking to originate non-qualified mortgages or acquire the loans continue to insist that the relatively low volume of such loans is due to a lack of effort from lenders. “It’s not that the non-QM space is competing for borrowers that are getting loans elsewhere, it’s that the non-QM space is competing for origination capacity at existing originators,” said Matt Nichols, CEO of Deephaven Mortgage. Many have placed...

Jumbo mortgages accounted for 18.3 percent of total first-lien originations in 2015, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis of Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data recently released by federal regulators. That was virtually unchanged from the 18.1 percent share that jumbo loans held in the 2014 HMDA data. The analyses match conventional loan amounts and county information about the secured property to Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac conforming loan limits, including adjustments for high-cost markets, in effect at the time. Purchase mortgages accounted...[Includes two data tables]

The underlying theme of portfolio lending is the ability to use compensating factors in underwriting a mortgage, said analysts at MIAC Analytics in a recent web posting. Portfolio lenders, many of them community bankers, have figured out to how to find profitable opportunities in the mortgage niches that don’t work in the agency market, MIAC said. Often, these are consumers who were left out of the housing recovery because of the sharp decline in capital available in the non-agency market, they added. Typically, they don’t...

Nonbanks crossed a threshold in the third quarter of 2016, posting a hefty 6.3 percent increase in their combined Ginnie Mae servicing portfolio, according to a new Inside FHA/VA Lending analysis. Nonbanks serviced $826.6 billion of Ginnie single-family mortgage-backed securities as of the end of September. That represented 51.3 percent of the total Ginnie market. The nonbank servicing total includes a small amount of Ginnie servicing held by state housing finance agencies, roughly 1.0 percent of the entire market. But it doesn’t include the significant amount of Ginnie servicing that nonbanks do as subservicers for both depository and nonbank clients. Interestingly, the biggest gain for nonbanks in percentage terms came in servicing VA loans, which rose 8.1 percent from the second quarter to $252.1 billion, or 51.0 percent of the market. The VA sector is one business from ... [4 charts ]

One mortgage CEO who has been contacted by Wornow said he’s in the process of starting his own capital markets company.

Some good news for default servicing: For all the loans that are out there, there will always be excessive debt, illness, divorce, unemployment, or some other disruptive factor, noted one expert.

A total of $12.41 billion of non-agency MBS were issued during the third quarter of 2016, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis, but the market continued to rely heavily on a mix of recycled collateral and niche transactions. Overall issuance was up 78.3 percent from the second quarter, including big gains in prime MBS production and re-securitization deals. That still left year-to-date issuance off 43.9 percent from the first nine months of 2015. The huge jump in prime MBS production is...[Includes three data tables]

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac saw a robust 29.7 percent jump in single-family mortgage business during the third quarter, with most of the gain coming from the purchase-mortgage side of the business. And more purchase-mortgage business usually means a bigger share for correspondent lenders. Correspondent originations accounted...[Includes two data tables]