It’s no secret that the securitization market for jumbo loans has been anemic since the housing bust of 2008, but is mortgage insurance a possible panacea? Arch MI recently set up a new subsidiary that will write coverage on jumbo loans as well as portfolio products. In its press statement, Arch said it created Arch Mortgage Guaranty Co. in part to aid lenders that want to securitize. In a recent interview with Inside MBS & ABS, Arch MI President David Gansberg said...

DBRS, which reports its ratings on re-securitizations, actually was involved in more transactions than S&P and ranked second in dollar volume with $6.47 billion.

Proponents of the non-agency MBS market continue to work on initiatives to revive the market, with progress somewhat slow but steady. The Treasury Department and the Structured Finance Industry Group are facilitating separate efforts to entice investors to buy new non-agency MBS. At the ABS Vegas conference sponsored by the Structured Finance Industry Group and Information Management Network this week, Olga Gorodetsky, a senior policy advisor at the Treasury, said there’s no timeframe for when the benchmark non-agency MBS the Treasury is trying to facilitate might be issued. “It will be market driven,” she said. Gorodetsky said...[Includes one data chart]

“Agency product is much easier to originate,” said Eric Burner, a partner at the law firm of Hunton & Williams.

The two best things about the mortgage origination market in the fourth quarter were that it meant 2014 wasn’t as bad as once feared, and that refinance demand had picked up. But a new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis and ranking reveals two other positive trends: the jumbo and home-equity markets continued to gain strength in the final three months of 2014. Lenders originated an estimated $67 billion of jumbo mortgages during the fourth quarter, up 3.1 percent from the previous period. Home-equity production bounced 5.0 percent higher, to an estimated $21 billion. Neither gain was...[Includes two data charts]

Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro faced the wrath of the GOP majority during a House Financial Services Committee hearing this week on the state of the FHA, focusing on the agency’s recent decision to cut annual mortgage insurance premiums. While Castro may have been warned about stepping into the lion’s den, he appeared ill-prepared for the confrontation with Republicans, unable to answer basic questions such as FHA’s net income, overall delinquency rate and the serious delinquency rate for 2014. Democrats, on the other hand, helped the embattled secretary regain his footing by expressing support for FHA’s efforts and putting perspective on some of FHA’s actions to strengthen the Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund and help qualify more borrowers for FHA credit. Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-TX, set...

The jumbo market ended 2014 with $235 billion in originations, a 14 percent decline from the prior year.

The ABS Vegas show attracted more than 6,000 attendees, but few investors appear ready to buy new jumbo MBS.

Bayview is purchasing from a network of correspondent sellers roughly $10 million per month in loans that don’t meet the QM test defined by the CFPB.

Citadel Servicing Corp., which has made a name for itself as a new-style subprime lender, has rolled out an Alt A mortgage called “Maggi.”