Officials at Impac Mortgage Holdings said originations of non-qualified mortgages are a “primary focus” for the lender this year. Impac has been one of the most prominent non-QM lenders, but production remains relatively low. Impac originated $48.0 million in non-QMs in the third quarter of 2015, the most recent figures available. The lender refers to these originations as AltQM products. Impac focused its early non-QM efforts in the wholesale channel and started offering non-QMs via ...

Parkside Mortgage Trust recently started operations with plans to acquire non-agency mortgages, including non-qualified mortgages. The first loan acquired by the real estate investment trust was a jumbo QM. Officials at PMT said Parkside Lending, an affiliate of the REIT, will service the mortgages. “This effort has been in the works for the past three years and we’re proud that it has finally come to fruition,” said Matthew Ostrander, president and chairman of PMT. “We’re excited to be entering ...

The volume of non-agency mortgage-backed securities held by banks and thrifts has declined much more quickly than the amount of total non-agency MBS outstanding. Banks and thrifts held a total of $96.76 billion in non-agency MBS as of the end of the third quarter of 2015, down 28.4 percent compared with the end of the third quarter of 2014, according to a new analysis and ranking from the Inside Mortgage Finance Bank Mortgage Database. In that span ... [Includes one data chart]

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced on Wednesday that Ocwen Financial agreed to a $2.0 million settlement. The agreement covers misstatements of financial results due to a “flawed” methodology to value mortgage servicing rights and conflict-of-interest issues involving William Erbey, the former executive chairman of Ocwen. “Ocwen released inaccurate financial statements because its internal controls were inadequate and its audit committee failed to scrutinize ...

A&D Mortgage recently started offering non-qualified mortgages on a wholesale basis via mortgage brokers. The lender, whose originations are focused in southern Florida, noted that its underwriting for the loans includes “limited income and asset documentation” including options for stated income and stated assets. A&D offers non-QMs aimed at investors and foreign nationals. The lender said the loans are typically for non-owner-occupied ... [Includes four briefs]

Goldman Sachs last week announced it has agreed to a $5.1 billion settlement, the largest regulatory penalty in the firm’s history, concluding an investigation brought by the Residential MBS Working Group of the U.S. Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force. The agreement in principle is poised to resolve actual and potential civil claims by the U.S. Department of Justice, the New York and Illinois attorneys general, the National Credit Union Administration (as conservator for several failed credit unions) and the Federal Home Loan Banks of Chicago and Seattle. At issue are...

By now the word is out: Certain unnamed secondary market investors are turning away mortgages because of compliance errors, expressing the opinion they do not want to be on the “liability hook” for any origination errors under the new integrated disclosure rule known as TRID. The Mortgage Bankers Association recently singled out a jumbo investor that’s been rejecting 100 percent of the loans offered by originators. The trade group declined to identify the investor, but other ...

Compliance violations with a disclosure rule that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau implemented in October continue to cause problems for non-agency mortgages in the secondary market. The CFPB and Fitch Ratings separately provided guidance recently regarding the so-called TRID integrated disclosure rule that could help industry participants get more comfortable with TRID. There have been reports that some buyers of non-agency mortgages have balked at ...

The non-agency mortgage-backed security market could be revived this year by economic factors rather than efforts by Congress or industry participants, according to analysts. The non-agency share of mortgage originations has been relatively strong in recent years, but the loans were largely held in bank portfolios instead of included in non-agency MBS. Legislative reform of the government-sponsored enterprises and potential incentives for non-agency MBS issuance look ...

The Federal Housing Finance Agency published a final rule this week that will prevent real estate investment trusts from gaining access to financing from the Federal Home Loan Bank system via captive insurance companies. REITs are not allowed direct membership in an FHLBank. However, in recent years a number of REITs have formed captive insurance companies that were granted FHLBank membership because insurance companies were allowed to ...