Redwood Trust is set to issue a “bespoke” prime non-agency mortgage-backed security. The deal largely looks like other MBS from Redwood, but a spokesperson for the real estate investment trust said the MBS was tailored for one investor. Kroll Bond Rating Agency placed preliminary ratings on the planned $338.7 million Sequoia Mortgage Trust 2018-4 last week. The deal is scheduled to close on April 20. There are only minor differences between the MBS and three other ...

Eave, a direct-mortgage lender, launched recently with a focus on jumbo mortgages, technology and low fees. The originator, only operating in Colorado at the moment, claims to be able to close loans about twice as fast as “brand name” lenders. “We took the entire mortgage universe apart and put it back together, better,” the firm said, touting its underwriting process. The lender claims that more than 60 percent of the information collected by other lenders from ...

Issuance of new single-family Ginnie Mae mortgage-backed securities fell sharply in the first quarter of 2018, according to a new Inside FHA/VA Lending ranking and analysis. The agency issued $92.58 billion in MBS backed by forward mortgages during the first three months of 2018. That was down 14.8 percent from the previous three-month period and represented the lowest quarterly total since early 2015. The 1Q figure is based on truncated loan amounts reported in Ginnie’s loan-level MBS disclosures. Reports with unrounded single-family loan amounts show a total of $95.75 billion in first-quarter MBS issuance, including FHA reverse mortgages. The loan-level data reveal that production fell 6.9 percent from February to March, when just $28.21 billion of Ginnie single-family securities were issued. That was the lowest monthly volume since February 2015. Both the FHA and VA programs saw significant ... [Charts]

Ginnie Mae this week meted penalties to two of the nine issuers that received warnings from the agency for excessive refinancings of VA mortgages. Bloomberg reported that Ginnie barred NewDay Financial’s and Nations Lending’s from the more lucrative multi-issuer mortgage-backed securities pools, forcing them to issue custom pools. The restrictions became effective immediately. The agency’s action could reduce mortgage interest rates by 50 basis points for FHA and VA loans, which would benefit first-time homebuyers, said Jaret Seiberg, an analyst with Cowen Washington Research Group. On the other hand, the issuers Ginnie limited to issuing custom pools will end up making loans with higher rates, the analyst noted. Ginnie’s action is part of a joint effort with the Department of Veterans Affairs to crack down on loan churning and faster prepayments of VA loans pooled in Ginnie securities. Loan churning ...

Ginnie Mae’s anti-churning efforts have narrowed the spread between Ginnie and Fannie Mae mortgage-backed securities, prompting executives to say things are almost back to normal. In an interview with Inside FHA/VA Lending this week, Michael Bright, executive vice president and chief operating officer at Ginnie Mae, said the market and investors have responded positively to the agency’s efforts to resolve the churning and prepayment problems. “The Ginnie spread has fallen almost half a point and our securities have become more liquid,” he said. “We want to make sure we’re giving investors CPRs (constant prepayment rates) that they can model.” Bright said he cares less about the overall level of prepayment speeds. What he truly cares about is ensuring that when an investor purchases a Ginnie security, the prepay speed is correlated to changes in the interest rates and not the ...

FHA streamline refinancing fell significantly in 2017 from the previous year, according to an Inside FHA/VA Lending analysis of agency data. Lenders closed 2017 with $37.4 billion of FHA streamline refi loans, buoyed by a 12.2 percent increase in origination in the fourth quarter. However, business was down a whopping 34.5 percent year-over-year. The segment ended the first quarter strongly with, $13.05 billion, but faltered over the next nine months. Streamline refinancing accounted for 15.8 percent of total FHA originations in 2017. Twelve states, led by California, each reported FHA streamline refi originations in excess of $1 billion last year. The Golden State closed the year with $8.05 billion of FHA-to-FHA refis, which accounted for 21 percent of all FHA loans in the state last year. The highest FHA streamline refi-producers after California were, in sequential order, ... [Charts]

FHA insured approximately $1.9 billion of ineligible mortgage loans made to borrowers with delinquent federal debts or who are subject to federal administrative offset for past-due child support payments, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s inspector general. Approximately 9,500 loans were ineligible because the sources used by lenders to identify ineligible borrowers lacked sufficient information to raise red flags. In addition, FHA failed to guide lenders adequately in reviewing child support payments, the IG said. Federal law prohibits loans, loan guarantees or insurance to delinquent federal debtors, including those with delinquent child support subject to administrative offset, until the delinquency is resolved. Auditors drew a statistical sample of 60 loans from 13,927 FHA-insured loans that closed in 2016 and analyzed data on their related borrowers in the ...

Issuance of non-agency mortgage-backed securities with prime jumbo loans and expanded-credit mortgages flourished in the first quarter of 2018, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside Nonconforming Markets. Combined, $6.28 billion of such securities was issued, more than double the activity in the first quarter of 2017 and up 24.6 percent from the fourth quarter of last year. Some $4.23 billion of prime jumbo MBS was issued during ... [Includes one data chart]

Angel Oak Capital Advisors issued a $328.76 million nonprime mortgage-backed security this week, its biggest so far. Its previous high was a $210.45 million offering in July. DBRS and Fitch Ratings assigned AAA ratings to Angel Oak Mortgage Trust I, LLC 2018-1. The deal included credit enhancement of 35.6 percent on the senior tranche, somewhat lower than previous issuance from Angel Oak. Fitch said Angel Oak has strong underwriting and risk management practices, which ...

The first jumbo mortgage-backed security from loanDepot is set to close April 6. After a span where the nonbank contributed to jumbo MBS issued by other firms, loanDepot set up its own securitization shelf. The $299.83 million Mello Mortgage Capital Acceptance 2018-MTG1 was stocked with non-agency jumbos along with conforming jumbos eligible for sale to the government-sponsored enterprises. The deal received AAA ratings from DBRS and Moody’s Investors Service with ...