The Federal Housing Finance Agency will announce 2014 loan limits for the government-sponsored enterprises near the end of November and provide lenders at least six months before the expected reductions take effect. “FHFA will follow its practice of announcing the 2014 conforming loan limits in late November, at which time further information will be provided on potential reductions in the size of loans the GSEs will guaranty going forward,” said Edward DeMarco, acting director of the FHFA ...

Wells Fargo originated nearly one out of every five jumbo mortgages completed in 2012, according to a new analysis and ranking by Inside Nonconforming Markets of Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data. Wells had a 17.8 percent share of the $220.51 billion in non-agency jumbo mortgages originated last year, more than double its nearest rival. The origination volumes are based on one-unit conventional loan limits for specific metropolitan statistical areas and the $417,000 conforming loan limit [Includes one data chart] ...

A number of small subprime lenders report that they see strong demand from borrowers as well as investors looking for the strong, if risky, returns offered by subprime lending. At least two life insurance companies have approached Citadel Servicing about buying some of its new subprime loan production, according to company CEO Dan Perl. In an interview with Inside Nonconforming Markets, Perl declined to identify the insurance companies, but said he believes a market will soon develop for subprime mortgages ...

As credit standards continue to tighten in the face of soon-to-be-implemented regulations, potential nonprime borrowers will increasingly find themselves marginalized in the mortgage market, according to Lewis Ranieri, the former Salomon Brothers vice chairman who helped pioneer mortgage-backed securities four decades ago. In a new white paper Ranieri co-authored, he makes the case that mortgages with credit scores below 680 are currently considered subprime, while the subprime cutoff before the ...

FHA jumbo loan originations continued their quarterly fluctuations as production in the second quarter of 2013 slipped after a good run in the previous quarter, according to Inside FHA Lending’s analysis of FHA data. Volume fell 1.5 percent from the first quarter, during which the FHA posted $5.36 billion in jumbo mortgage originations. The first quarter number broke a declining production trend that began in the second quarter of last year when FHA reported $6.27 billion in jumbo lending. FHA lenders produced a total of $10.8 billion in new jumbo loans in the first half of 2013, down 2.7 percent from ... [2 charts]

Shellpoint Partners this week pulled the plug on its second jumbo non-agency MBS issuance of the year and will instead sell the mortgages as whole loans. Shellpoint Asset Funding Trust 2013-2 was initially offered as a $308.64 million deal in September. The company then reduced the offering to a $250.85 million securitization with a number of tweaks aimed at attracting investors. In the end, the company couldn’t structure...

Investors shying away from new jumbo MBS have expressed strong interest in the risk-sharing transactions offered by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Demand for the transactions has been so high recently that some analysts are recommending that investors could see better returns from vintage non-agency MBS. Fannie Mae said about 75 investors initially bought into the $675 million in non-guaranteed bonds it offered, and Freddie Mac said about 50 investors initially bought into the $500 million in non-guaranteed bonds it offered. “The deal has been very well received...

Lenders continue to originate non-agency jumbo mortgages, but few are likely to be securitized in the coming months due to more favorable economics for banks retaining the loans in portfolio. Longer term, many investors suggest they won’t return to the non-agency mortgage-backed security market until issuers standardize their offerings. The ABS East conference sponsored by Information Management Network last week in Miami presented a tale of two markets: jumbo MBS and everything else ...

The jumbo mortgage-backed security market showed some signs of life this week as Shellpoint Partners offered its second deal of the year, a restructured and downsized version of the transaction targeted for late September. The $250.85 million deal is set to receive a triple-A rating with credit enhancement of 7.10 percent on the top-rated tranche, according to Kroll Bond Rating Agency. The $308.64 million deal Shellpoint was preparing in September was set to have credit enhancement of 7.90 percent ...

First Republic Bank was the top contributor to jumbo mortgage-backed securities through the first three quarters in 2013, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside Nonconforming Markets. Meanwhile, underwriting trends for the sector were mixed. Some $2.10 billion in originations by First Republic were included in jumbo MBS this year, as of the end of September. The loans accounted for 17.2 percent of all non-agency jumbos securitized, more than double the next closest lender ... [Includes two data charts]