The public mortgage-backed security shelf recently filed by Redwood Trust was drafted with significant input from the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to a review of correspondence between the jumbo MBS issuer and the SEC. After Redwood’s new Form SF-3, which allows for $4.83 billion in MBS issuance, was published in mid-May, the SEC released four letters sent to Redwood during the drafting stage for the shelf. Redwood’s responses to the SEC’s inquiries were also ...

Determining a self-employed borrower’s ability to repay can be one of the more challenging underwriting tasks for non-agency lenders. Shelley Callaghan, a senior marketing program manager at MGIC, said one of the main issues to consider when underwriting borrowers with income from partnerships or S corporations is the pattern of cash distributions from the business to the potential borrower. A number of nonbanks have launched non-agency programs for self-employed ...

The upcoming batch of non-agency interest-only mortgages that will hit a 10-year recast is larger than the IO recast volume seen last year, according to Moody’s Investors Service. However, the rating service predicts that a spike in default rates prompted by the recasts will be less severe than that of 2015. “Default rates will likely stay below those of Alt A IO loans in non-agency mortgage-backed securities which re-cast to full payment in 2015 because of a slightly smaller expected ...

Comparing 2005 with 2015, the share of loan applications from borrowers with low credit scores has declined at a greater pace than originations of mortgages to borrowers with lower credit scores, according to CoreLogic. “The decline in originations could be a result of potential applicants being either too cautious or discouraged from applying, more so than tight underwriting as the culprit in lower mortgage activity,” said Archana Pradhan, an economist at ... [Includes seven briefs]

Jumbo mortgages accounted for 20.3 percent of total first-lien originations in the first quarter of 2016, according to estimates by Inside Nonconforming Markets. While jumbo production declined slightly in the first quarter compared with the previous period, overall originations posted a steeper drop. An estimated $77.0 billion in jumbos were originated in the first quarter of 2016, down 1.3 percent from the previous quarter and up by 6.9 percent compared with ... [Includes one data chart]

Portfolio lending remains a more viable option than securitization for lenders in the non-agency mortgage market in part because of the depth and variety of funding sources that allow them to offer a wide range of products. Depository institutions rely heavily on low-cost retail deposits to fund their retained mortgage portfolios, according to panelists speaking at the Mortgage Bankers Association secondary market conference in New York this week. A typical customer of ...

One of the biggest factors limiting the issuance of jumbo mortgage-backed securities is the strong appetite banks have to hold jumbos in portfolio. Redwood Trust, which aims to issue jumbo MBS, had adapted by competing with banks and working with them. Redwood had a gross margin of 140 basis points on its jumbo business in the first quarter of 2016, much higher than the 59 basis points in gross margins on jumbos Redwood had in the full year of 2015 ...

The proposed standards drafted by the Structured Finance Industry Group regarding mortgage disclosure rules will help address issues in the non-agency market, according to investors and rating services. Moody’s Investors Service hosted a meeting last week with a group of investors, issuers and others involved in non-agency MBS. Among other issues, the group discussed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s combined Truth in Lending Act and the ...

Clayton Holdings was rated as a deal agent for non-agency mortgage-backed securities last week. The rating by Morningstar Credit Ratings was the first formal assessment of a deal agent, a role aimed at improving protections for investors in new non-agency MBS. Morningstar also assessed Clayton as a representation-and-warranty reviewer, assigning ratings of MOR RV2 for both functions. The firm’s rating scale ranges from RV1 to RV4 and Morningstar said it is the only ...

A group of investors pushed back against suggestions that so-called private capital won’t return to the market for new non-agency mortgage-backed securities. The Association of Mortgage Investors took exception to recent comments by Timothy Mayopoulos, president and CEO of Fannie Mae. He predicted that the non-agency MBS market won’t come back due to significant losses suffered during the financial crisis. However, the AMI said the government-sponsored enterprises are ...