Originations of jumbo mortgages continued strong in the first quarter of 2015, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside Nonconforming Markets. An estimated $70.0 billion in jumbos was originated during the quarter, up 59.1 percent compared with the first quarter of 2014. A number of jumbo lenders more than doubled their production during that time. “Our jumbo pipelines are near record high, as the demand for jumbo mortgages remains healthy,” said ... [Includes one data chart]

The Federal Housing Finance Agency is making plans for how to increase the baseline conforming loan limit beyond $417,000 as home prices are close to recovering from the financial crisis. The FHFA last week announced that it will use the “expanded data” house price index that the agency has published since 2011 to make adjustments to the baseline conforming loan limit. A change to the baseline limit would also impact limits for high-cost areas, which are allowed to be ...

Real estate investment trusts and new investors in the mortgage business could provide funding for nonconforming lending, but securitization remains challenged, according to various experts at the recent secondary market conference sponsored by the Mortgage Bankers Association. The non-agency mortgage-backed securities market is very subdued, said Laurie Goodman, director of the Housing Finance Policy Center at the Urban Institute. Issuance has been running at about ...

The strong performance of jumbo mortgages originated in recent years is due to more than just focusing on borrowers with healthy credit scores, loan-to-value ratios and debt-to-income ratios, according to Moody’s Investors Service. The analysts said “soft” qualitative underwriting factors play a major role in jumbo performance. Qualitative factors considered by jumbo lenders include the absence of negative events in a borrower’s credit history, the number of unblemished lines of credit and ...

JPMorgan Chase and Credit Suisse are coming to market with separate jumbo mortgage-backed securities that have some sharp differences in terms of collateral. The $379.78 million JPMorgan Mortgage Trust 2015-3 includes some unique characteristics such as a handful of loans with combined loan-to-value ratios above 80.0 percent and some interest-only mortgages. While the average combined LTV ratio for mortgages to be included in the deal is 69.9 percent, 15 mortgages ...

Security issuances backed by VA loans totaled $35.5 billion in the first quarter of 2015, with VA streamline refinance loans accounting for 57.7 percent, according to an Inside FHA/VA Lending analysis of Ginnie Mae data. Approximately $20.5 billion in VA interest rate reduction refinancing loans were securitized during the first three months as borrowers took advantage of lower interest rates.“For the last three to four months, rates have been bottoming out again, and if rates are lower it makes sense to refinance,” said Jon Shrum, vice president of Commerce Home Mortgage, a VA-certified lender in Huntington Beach, CA. An estimated $14.5 billion in VA purchase mortgages also were securitized during period. VA loans comprised 13.1 percent of all loans in Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae mortgage-backed securities. California, Virginia, Texas, Florida and Washington, ... [2 charts]

New entrants in the Ginnie Mae issuer community expand access to credit at lower cost, deepen the market for Ginnie mortgage servicing rights and help address the agency’s “too-big-to-fail” issue, said the agency’s top executive. “Our top concern is that issuers have the operational and financial strength to meet issuer/servicer obligations,” Tozer said during the recent secondary market conference sponsored by the Mortgage Bankers Association. The flood of new nonbank issuers into the program has been well documented. While they have diluted the heavy concentration of business in the hands of a few megabanks, many have complex financial structures that are less tested in the marketplace, he said. The pipeline of issuer applicants has dropped dramatically, the Ginnie executive reported. To get approved, an applicant has to show where the cash will come from to ...

All three mortgage-production channels saw increased volume during the first quarter of 2015, but brokers made the most of the rising market, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance ranking and analysis. Mortgage brokers produced an estimated $39.0 billion of home mortgages during the first three months of 2015, an increase of 14.7 percent over the fourth quarter. That pushed the broker share of originations to 10.8 percent, the sector’s highest market share since 2010. Retail production facilities did...[Includes five data tables]

Economists at the Federal Housing Finance Agency published a paper last week detailing a model that could be a better gauge of how low house prices can fall than models used before the financial crisis.“Leveraging a model based upon consumer and investor incentives, we are able to explain the depth of housing market downturns at both the national and state level over a variety of market environments,” the economists said. The economists noted that their model is dynamic, which is more useful than the static models used by the predecessor to the FHFA, which “proved insufficiently stressful in the lead up to the Great Recession.” A model based on a static shock can produce an insufficient level of stress ...

Seven months ago, a fledgling nonprime lender called Deephaven Mortgage unveiled a $300 million investment in the firm by a global “alternative” hedge fund called Varde Partners, Minneapolis. But since then, not much has been heard about Deephaven. Then again, it might be said that the “new” nonprime industry is still trying to figure out how to operate in a world of tight regulation, non-QM lending and a securitization market that doesn’t want to touch its product. Matt Nichols, the former Goldman Sachs managing director who formed Deephaven two years ago, did not respond...