An affiliate of TIAA, FSB issued a $319.7 million prime non-agency mortgage-backed security this week. Most of the loans were non-agency jumbos, in addition to a 3.5 percent share of mortgages eligible for sale to the government-sponsored enterprises. Griffin Funding, a wholesale lender focused on the west coast, said it partnered with one of the largest private equity buyers of non-qualified mortgages as a fully-delegated direct seller. The private-equity firm ... [Includes three briefs]

Wells Fargo was set to price its first post-crisis jumbo mortgage-backed security this week, marking a significant occasion for the sector. Wells is the largest originator of jumbo mortgages and the bank has been holding production in portfolio instead of issuing non-agency MBS. Company officials note that the $441.3 million Wells Fargo Mortgage Backed Securities 2018-1 Trust is in part a test of the MBS market by the bank. The deal is scheduled to close on Oct. 25. MBS issuers generally can't ...

Purchase mortgages accounted for 70.7 percent of prime non-agency jumbo mortgage-backed securities issued in the third quarter of 2018, according to an analysis by Inside Nonconforming Markets. The third quarter marked a post-crisis high for the purchase mortgage share of prime jumbo MBS issuance. The previous quarterly high was a 67.3 percent share in the third quarter of 2016. Some $2.51 billion of purchase mortgages were ... [Includes two data charts]

Top-notch ratings assigned by three firms to a non-agency mortgage-backed security from Galton Funding prompted criticism from Fitch Ratings, which didn’t rate the issuance. The planned $452.7 million Galton Funding Mortgage Trust 2018-2 diverges from traditional non-agency MBS in its treatment of unpaid interest from delinquent mortgages. Fitch suggested that the change to the deal structure was so significant that it wouldn’t rate the transaction. Fitch noted that losses from unpaid ...

New Residential Investment is set to issue its first mortgage-backed security with non-qualified mortgages. The home loans were originated by New Penn Financial, a lender that New Residential acquired in July. DBRS and Fitch Ratings assigned preliminary AAA ratings to the planned $310.7 million New Residential Mortgage Loan Trust 2018-NQM1. The deal will include credit enhancement of 32.2 percent on the senior tranche. Mortgages backing the deal have an average loan age of ...

A rise in interest rates on mortgages will help First Republic Bank, San Francisco, gain market share in jumbo originations, according to officials at the bank. Through the first six months of 2018, First Republic ranked fourth among non-agency jumbo lenders, accounting for 3.8 percent of the estimated $140.0 billion of jumbo originations, according to Inside Nonconforming Markets. James Herbert, chairman and CEO of First Republic, noted that some jumbo lenders are reducing staff as originations decline ...

The latest prime non-agency mortgage-backed securities from Flagstar Bank and loanDepot include a mix of mortgages eligible for sale to the government-sponsored enterprises and non-agency jumbo mortgages. Flagstar included a further twist with its MBS, as the GSE-eligible mortgages are for investment properties. Such loans account for 77.9 percent of the planned $326.2 million Flagstar Mortgage Trust 2018-6RR. The issuance follows a $329.1 million deal that Flagstar issued in May ...

The interest-rate spread between non-agency jumbo mortgages and conforming mortgages is much closer than average interest rates suggest, according to an analysis by CoreLogic. During the second quarter of 2018, the average interest rate on a 30-year fixed-rate jumbo mortgage was 33 basis points lower than the average rate for a conforming mortgage, according to CoreLogic. Archana Pradhan, a senior professional economist at CoreLogic, noted that the averages present a skewed view of ...

The Structured Finance Industry Group released an updated compliance review scope for due diligence reviews this week. The update addresses various changes to mortgage-disclosure standards since the initial review scope was released in 2016. The Mortgage Industry Standards Maintenance Organization has established a workgroup to implement a standard dataset for grading non-agency mortgage-backed securities. MISMO said the current ... [Includes eight briefs]

Issuance trends for non-agency mortgage-backed securities stocked with newly-originated mortgages were mixed in the third quarter, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside Nonconforming Markets. Issuance of prime non-agency MBS declined significantly on a sequential basis in the third quarter. And for the first time, expanded-credit MBS issuance volume topped prime non-agency MBS activity. Some $3.58 billion of expanded-credit MBS was ... [Includes one data chart]