Redwood Trust is preparing to issue a $343.28 million jumbo mortgage-backed security, according to a presale report by Kroll Bond Rating Agency. Sequoia Mortgage Trust 2017-1 will include mortgages from 132 lenders, led by Quicken Loans with a 7.8 percent share. Servicing for loans in the MBS will mostly be handled by Shellpoint Mortgage Servicing. Redwood will retain 1.0 percent of the dollar volume of the MBS, according to KBRA. Three firms ... [Includes two briefs]

Ginnie Mae guaranteed a total of $507.46 billion of single-family mortgage-backed securities in 2016, its biggest annual volume ever, according to a new analysis and ranking by Inside FHA/VA Lending. That was up 16.4 percent from the agency’s previous record of $435.80 billion set in 2015. (Those figures include MBS backed by FHA home-equity conversion mortgages, which are not included in the table below or in the rankings on pages 3-5.) In 2016, Ginnie guaranteed $497.03 billion of MBS backed by traditional forward mortgages, also a record, which was up 16.9 percent from the previous year. The biggest factor in last year’s record-setting production was the boom in VA lending, particularly VA refinance loans. Issuers securitized a record $203.03 billion of VA loans last year, up 33.0 percent from the 2015 total. Some 54.3 percent of those loans were refinance transactions. Total VA refi loan ... [4 charts]

“It was a record month for us,” said Angel Oak executive Mike Fierman.

Ever since the nation’s financial crisis, commercial banks and other depositories have dominated the second-lien business and likely will continue to do so in the coming years, but that isn’t stopping nonbanks from testing the waters once again. According to research by Inside Mortgage Finance, several nonbanks have slipped back into the market, albeit with muted production volumes. And many of the firms that have crept back in are partnering with depositories. The reason for the strategy is...

For years, TransUnion has worked to get mortgage lenders and the GSEs to adopt VantageScore, a move that is still under consideration, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

Citadel now has offices in California, Georgia, Oregon and plans to open an underwriting and transaction location in Salt Lake City soon.

Will the leaked memo lead to confirmation problems for Mnuchin, a Goldman Sachs and Wall Street alumni? Probably not...

But if you think that Wells Fargo will pull a “BofA” and quietly downshift its presence in mortgages, think again.

The new MBS is backed by 4,274 mortgages that have seasoned for an average of 10.6 years.

Wells Fargo, for example, reported that 90.7 percent of its third-quarter jumbo originations came through the retail channel…