Much of the increase in Impac Mortgage Holdings' originations was from the retail channel.

Industry experts agree that the commercial MBS market is not going to live up to expectations of $100 billion of issuance this year, but they are hopeful the market will rebound after the industry fully implements the Dodd-Frank Act risk-retention rules that take effect Dec. 24, 2016. According to Kenneth Cheng, managing director of CMBS ratings services for Morningstar Credit Ratings, there is much uncertainty in the CMBS market about the actual impact of the risk-retention requirements. “I think everybody has agreed that it will be a negative impact – it’s just the magnitude of that impact that is uncertain,” he told Inside MBS & ABS this week. “It’s going to drive up the cost of CMBS – how much is anybody’s guess.” Also, as the cost of issuing CMBS increases, profit margins will...

The secondary market in mortgage servicing rights rebounded during the second quarter of 2016 after starting the year with a thud, according to an exclusive Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of mortgage-securities disclosures by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae. The three agencies saw a combined $42.95 billion of MSR change hands in bulk transactions during the second quarter. That was up 20.6 percent from the first quarter, when ... [Includes two data charts]

Small banks have increased their holdings of mortgage servicing rights in recent years as more of these institutions switched to delivering mortgages directly to the government-sponsored enterprises, according to an analysis by federal banking regulators. Small banks, those with total assets less than $10.0 billion, held 8.0 percent of the banking industry’s total mortgage servicing assets in 2015, up from a share of less than 2.0 percent as recently as 2009. Small banks have increased ...

Top commercial banks reported substantial increases in mortgage production during the second quarter, but mortgage-banking income was lagging, according to a new analysis of earnings reports by Inside Mortgage Trends. In aggregate, the five large banks reported $124.25 billion in mortgage originations for the second quarter, a hefty 30.1 percent increase from the first three months of the year. At the high end, Wells Fargo said its mortgage ... [Includes one data chart]

Lenders operating in the consumer-direct channel have a distinct opportunity to use technology to improve the mortgage experience for borrowers, according to findings from the Strategic Mortgage Finance Group. Garth Graham, a senior partner at the firm more commonly referred to as Stratmor, detailed the findings in a new publication from the mortgage-industry consulting firm. The Stratmor executive suggested that consumer-direct lenders should work with technology that ...

Unemployment and negative equity have a large influence on a household’s decision to default on their mortgage, but a study by a team of government economists and academics has found that most financially distressed households manage to keep current on their loan. Another surprising finding by the study “Can’t Pay or Won’t Pay? Unemployment, Negative Equity, and Strategic Default” is that strategic defaulters are few and rare despite the publicity they get ...

Underwater borrowers are regaining equity, student loan debt is increasing, and FHA may be losing revenue due to decreasing recovery rates, according to the latest report from Black Knight Financial Services. Data as of the end of May 2016 indicate that 425,000 underwater borrowers are breathing easier as usable equity rose by $260 billion in the first quarter of 2016, thanks to improving housing prices, the report said. This translates into a 6 percent increase in ...

When origination volume begins growing rapidly, as it appears to have in the second quarter, lenders often ramp up their third-party origination platforms rather than beef up their retail production capacity. According to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of agency mortgage-backed securities data, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae securitized $156.23 billion of TPO loans during the second quarter, a 32.2 percent increase over the previous ... [Includes one data chart]

"Liquidity provides the grease that allows capital markets to operate freely," said Rodrigo Lopez, chairman-elect of the Mortgage Bankers Association. "We are currently experiencing a lack of liquidity, not a lack of cash."