It is unclear exactly when Jay Memmott left Seterus.

In other mortgage-stock news, Ellie Mae Co-founder, Chairman and CEO Sig Anderman has been exercising stock options of late, and selling shares in the company.

Jumbos for borrowers with strong credit profiles present banks with limited risks – particularly adjustable-rate mortgages – and the loans offer lucrative opportunities to cross-sell other products.

On the non-QM front, Bayview will go as high as $1.5 million, but the loan-to-value ratio is capped at 80 percent.

Every buyer has a different definition of "reperforming," but generally the loan must be current for at least 12 months.

Although the FHLB-Chicago will facilitate jumbo purchases with Redwood, any FHLB member across the nation can upstream product to the REIT.

RBS, which is effectively owned by the British government, still faces liability in private label security (PLS) matters tied to Greenwich Capital, a U.S. subsidiary that at one time was the largest nonprime issuer in the nation.

The loans in the deal were largely originated by First Republic Bank and Chase, banks that certainly have the capacity to hold jumbos in portfolio.

Redwood Trust late last week struck a deal with the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago to purchase fixed-rate jumbo mortgages from FHLBank members participating in the Mortgage Partnership Finance Program. Redwood will be the sole investor in “high balance” mortgages from the new MPF Direct program for three years. The program is subject to final approval from the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Officials at Redwood said the real estate investment trust plans to start investing in MPF Direct loans during the second half of this year. The loan limit for the MPF Direct program is...

Morningstar Credit Ratings late last week published new rating criteria for non-agency MBS. While the firm has been active in the commercial MBS sector, the non-agency MBS rating criteria Morningstar released in 2012 never caught on with issuers. “We have taken a fresh, holistic approach to the residential MBS rating process to help investors gauge the relative default risk of a security against its peers,” said Vickie Tillman, president of Morningstar. Tillman joined the rating service in August after more than 30 years at Standard & Poor’s. Morningstar said...