MountainView, a firm known mostly for the market it makes in mortgage servicing rights, is branching out into non-QM lending, but company officials cautioned that its effort will start small. Moreover, a spokesman for the firm clarified that loans acquired through its new “Peak Program” will meet the ability-to-repay rule requirements, including the non-QM loans. “We expect...

Credit unions have been slowly expanding their share of new mortgage originations for the past decade, but in 2014 the industry crossed a symbolic threshold, according to a new Inside MortgageFinance analysis of call-report data. For the first time, the credit union industry owns a double-digit share of new originations. The industry originated $30.0 billion of home mortgages during the second quarter – or 10.2 percent of the $295.0 billion in total mortgage originations for the period. Back in 2004, credit unions accounted...[Includes one data chart]

Mortgage lenders originated an estimated $17 billion in new home-equity loans during the second quarter of 2014, a 30.8 percent increase from the previous period, according to a new market analysis and ranking by Inside Mortgage Finance. But the volume of outstanding home-equity lines of credit and closed-end second mortgages held in portfolio by depository institutions – the biggest players in the HEL market – continued to dwindle. Banks, thrifts and credit unions reported a total of $540.4 billion of HELOCs on their books at the end of June, down 0.9 percent from March, along with a 1.5 percent drop in closed-end seconds. It continued...[Includes three data charts]

The Treasury Department is considering working with an issuer to sell a non-agency MBS that would serve as a benchmark transaction, according to agency officials. The goal of the issuance is to attract investors to the sector and create a standard term sheet for issuers. “The Treasury is thinking about facilitating one or more benchmark transactions,” Michael Stegman, counselor to the Treasury Department for housing finance policy, said this week at the ABS East conference produced by Information Management Network in Miami Beach. He said...

JPMorgan Chase and Two Harbors Investment are preparing to issue two new jumbo mortgage-backed securities. The $483.56 million JPMorgan Mortgage Trust 2014-IVR3 is set to receive AAA ratings from DBRS and Kroll Bond Rating Agency. The deal includes a number of unique characteristics, including consisting solely of adjustable-rate mortgages and having representations and warranties that DBRS deemed as weak. The majority of the loans in Chase’s planned MBS are seven-year ARMs ...

Moody’s Investors Service is working on revamping its process for rating new non-agency mortgage-backed securities, including allowing issuers to use the same loan-level model used in Moody’s rating process. “We are providing an unprecedented level of transparency through publication of our model,” Navneet Agarwal, a managing director of residential MBS at Moody’s, said last week during a webinar hosted by the rating service. In August, Moody’s published a request for comment on its proposed ...

Originations of higher-priced mortgages increased significantly in 2013 compared with the previous year, according to an Inside Nonconforming Markets analysis of Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data released this week. The market share for higher-priced mortgages also more than doubled in 2013 compared with the previous year, but the loans continue to account for a small portion of total originations. Some $35.18 billion in higher-priced mortgages were sold in 2013, up from ... [Includes one data chart]

The performance of home-equity loans held by banks and thrifts remains strong but concerns have been raised about home-equity lines of credit originated before the financial crisis. Banks and thrifts reported $998.63 billion in total home-equity business at the end of the second quarter of 2014, including retained HELOCs and closed-end seconds, and unused HELOC commitments, according to the Inside Mortgage Finance Bank Mortgage Database. Total HEL business declined ... [Includes one data chart]

Ginnie Mae has unveiled new plans for issuer standards as well as steps to boost liquidity in the mortgage servicing rights (MSR) market. Agency officials at a summit hosted by Ginnie Mae this week in Washington, DC, said both actions are designed to avoid issuer failures and to preserve residential mortgage servicing as an economically viable activity and MSRs as an attractive asset class. The officials said changes will be made to Ginnie’s mortgage-backed securities program to support the agency’s transformation from a pre-crisis bank-driven government MBS program to a post-crisis program where non-depositories and smaller financial institutions play a much bigger role. By the middle of next year, approximately a third of Ginnie MSRs will have changed hands over the previous four years, agency officials said. Many of the new owners of the servicing rights are ...

Ginnie Mae securitized a relatively higher volume of loans for African-American borrowers than did Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, according to a new Inside FHA Lending analysis of recently released Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data covering 2013 mortgage originations. Nearly a quarter, 24.7 percent, of mortgages made to black borrowers last year had FHA, VA or rural housing loans financed through Ginnie Mae, loan-level HMDA data show. Fannie Mae (19.2 percent) and Freddie Mac (9.9 percent) also accounted for large shares of mortgages for black borrowers. However, blacks accounted for just 4.2 percent of mortgages with the race of the primary borrower identified in HMDA reports. Fannie actually had a bigger share of the Hispanic market (24.7 percent), but Ginnie accounted for a substantial 17.3 percent of mortgages made to Hispanic borrowers last year. All three agencies saw ... [1 chart]