Officials at Ocwen Financial announced late last week that the company plans to use its clean-up call option on loans backing vintage non-agency MBS that it services. Officials see strong profits in paying off non-agency MBS investors at par and then liquidating real estate owned properties whose loans were included in non-agency MBS. “The opportunity results from the arbitrage of the underlying loans in REO being worth more than the securities,” William Erbey, Ocwen’s executive chairman, said during the servicer’s earnings call for the second quarter of 2014. “In other words, the whole is worth less than the sum of the parts.” He said...

Two Harbors Investment is preparing to issue a $267.67 million jumbo mortgage-backed security, according to a preliminary term sheet obtained by Inside Nonconforming Markets. The deal is scheduled to close Aug. 5, nearly a year after the only other jumbo MBS issued by Two Harbors. Agate Bay Mortgage Trust 2014-1 is backed by 30-year fixed-rate mortgages from a variety of lenders, led by RPM Mortgage with a 12.8 percent share, New York Community Bank ...

While banks have plenty of capacity to retain jumbo mortgages in portfolio, the top two contributors to jumbo mortgage-backed securities issued in the second quarter of 2014 were actually banks, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside Nonconforming Markets. First Republic Bank and JPMorgan Chase were the top two contributors to the scant four jumbo MBS during the quarter. And since the start of 2013, three of the top five ... [Includes one data chart]

Flagstar Bank has $802 million in interest-only mortgages that are scheduled for principal payments to kick in over the coming years, and in some cases the borrower’s monthly mortgage payment will double. Officials at the bank said Flagstar is working with borrowers that have IOs and delinquencies have been low thus far. “We’ve put a dedicated team together to get ahead of these resets,” Lee Smith, Flagstar’s COO, said last week during the bank’s earnings presentation ...

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau recently proposed a significant expansion of the loan features lenders would need to report under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. The CFPB said the new data will help gauge whether regulations meant to limit originations of “risky mortgage products” have been effective. The federal regulator is seeking new disclosures regarding credit scores, debt-to-income ratios, qualified mortgage status and loan type, among many ...

The delinquency rate for residential FHA-insured mortgages fell at the halfway mark of 2014 from the end of the fourth quarter last year, a result of improved overall loan performance, strong credit standards and an improving, albeit slowly, economy, an Inside FHA Lending analysis of agency data suggests. Although the number of FHA lenders included in the analysis has doubled since year-end 2013, delinquency rates in the 30-60 days and 90-day plus buckets appear to be trending downward. As of June 30, FHA delinquencies across the board were down to 13.3 percent from 15.2 percent as of Dec. 30, 2013. The seriously delinquent rate – the percentage of loans that are 90 days or more past due – has dropped to 7.14 percent from 8.08 percent over the same period. The delinquency rate of FHA loans that are at least one payment past due also fell to ... [1 chart]

In the past two weeks, BlackRock has completed auctions of vintage non-agency MBS with a total unpaid principal balance of $8.1 billion. While the sales had the potential to push too much supply into the market, investor demand for the securities appears to have been strong. The market absorbed the first auction, for $3.7 billion in mostly subprime MBS from 2006, “without a hiccup,” according to analysts at Barclays Capital. Credit Suisse submitted winning bids on all of the non-agency MBS auctioned by BlackRock in the past two weeks, with most of the securities quickly being placed with other investors, indicating strong demand. Of the $3.7 billion in non-agency MBS auctioned last week, 96 percent of the balance was placed...

More than two years have passed since Bank of America parted ways with Fannie Mae on selling new purchase-money loans to the government-sponsored enterprise and no remedy seems in sight regarding a resolution to the matter. “There’s no change that I’m aware of related to the Fannie Mae situation,” said a spokesman for the bank. “We’re able to handle our loan origination business just fine with Freddie Mac.” According to figures compiled by Inside MBS & ABS, BofA did sell...

The conditional default rate, or annualized liquidations, of non-agency MBS loans rose 20 basis points to 4.92 percent in the second quarter, after declining for seven consecutive quarters from 9.76 percent in the second quarter of 2012, Fitch Ratings reported this week. “The recent turnaround in the trend can be partly attributed to a growing portion of bank-held real estate owned properties, which typically liquidate much faster than those that are still in the foreclosure process,” said Fitch. The rate of completed foreclosures to REO property has trended higher for four consecutive quarters. The previous decline in the CDR was driven...

The modest rebound in non-agency MBS issuance during the first three months of 2014 fizzled during the second quarter of the year, according to a new analysis and ranking by Inside MBS & ABS. A total of just $1.60 billion of non-agency MBS were issued during the second quarter, a 62.7 percent decline from the previous period. It was the lowest quarterly volume in new issuance since the financial crisis of 2008. On a year-to-date basis, new issuance was...