Although servicing brokers posted brisk sales figures for the first half of the year, the third quarter has been tepid, with buyers catching their breath while trying to figure out their next move.

Wells Fargo is getting closer to returning to the jumbo mortgage-backed security market, according to John Shrewsberry, a senior executive vice president and chief financial officer at the bank. “We will be securitizing some of our jumbo loans, which has been a dormant market for a long time, but just as a method of demonstrating liquidity and getting market pricing,” he said last week at a conference hosted by Barclays. Wells has been plotting a return to the non-agency MBS market for ...

A wide majority of banks and thrifts continued to increase their first-lien residential mortgage holdings in the second quarter, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside Nonconforming Markets. Some $2.04 trillion of residential first liens were held in bank and thrift portfolios as of the end of June, up 0.9 percent from March and up 5.2 percent compared with June 2017. Among the top 50 banks and thrifts, only six reduced their holdings on an annual basis ... [Includes one data chart]

Originations of adjustable-rate mortgages increased by 25.0 percent on a quarterly basis in the second quarter of 2018, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside Nonconforming Markets. An estimated $55.0 billion of ARMs were originated in the second quarter. The increase looks to be tied to seasonal factors and trends in interest rates. Through the first half of 2018, an estimated $99.0 billion of ARMs were originated, down 2.0 percent from ... [Includes one data chart]

Ginnie Mae assured the mortgage industry that it would accept so-called VA orphan loans as long as they satisfy the terms of corrective legislation passed by the House Financial Services Committee recently. “As long as the mortgage loan complies with the law, we will accept it and put our guarantee on it,” said an agency spokesperson in response to an Inside FHA/VA Lending inquiry. Ginnie’s assurance provides certainty to a subset of VA loans that have been in limbo since June because they could not be delivered into Ginnie mortgage-backed securities. Lawmakers responded to industry calls for a legislative fix last week by voting overwhelmingly to approve H.R. 6737, the “Protect Affordable Mortgages for Veterans Act of 2018.” Introduced by Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-NY, the bill would eliminate the seasoning requirements in the recently enacted Dodd-Frank Act reform legislation, which conflicted with ...

Originations of government-insured mortgages rose 11.2 percent from the first to the second quarter of 2018, according to Inside Mortgage Finance estimates. That increase was slightly lower than the 17.1 percent gain in total first-lien originations over that period. The big winner for the second quarter was the jumbo sector, where loan volume surged 33.5 percent from the first three months of the year. On a year-to-date basis, government lending was down 12.6 percent from the first half of 2017. This reflects the steep decline in refinance lending in general, which affected FHA/VA production significantly. Jumbo lending was also down, by 6.6 percent, from the first six months of last year, but the conventional-conforming market saw a 4.2 percent gain at the midway point in 2018. FHA/VA loans accounted for 22.8 percent of first-lien originations in the first half of 2018. The government share for all of last year was ... [Chart]

It looks like the Department of Housing and Urban Development will not be able meet its September target date for rolling out its long-awaited FHA condominium reform rule. Such is the consensus among stakeholders whose hopes were raised when HUD Secretary Ben Carson told the House Financial Services Committee in June that he would be issuing the rule this month. “HUD and the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (within the Office of Management and Budget) want to release the rules with the updated Single Family Handbook and they are still working on that,” said a real estate industry executive. He added that despite what Carson said at the committee hearing, “September is not likely for a release.” As of press time, the final condo reform rule had not yet been delivered for OMB review, a process that in the past has taken months to complete. In contrast, it took about a ...

Loss rates for notes sold in the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s distressed asset sales program are lower than those for notes that pass through the traditional conveyance claim process, according to HUD’s inspector general. An IG audit found that the DASP loss rate was more than 3 percentage points lower than the loss rate of similar conveyance notes. The IG took into account the losses for actual DASP sales and real estate-owned conveyance claims during the same audit period, the IG said. Ultimately, the DASP program saved the FHA insurance fund more money than the conveyance process, the report concluded. The FHA Office of Housing conducts mortgage loan sales under the Single Family Loan Sale Initiative, and most distressed notes are sold through DASP. The initiative aims to maximize recoveries to the ...

Correspondent-based mortgage production operations lost some ground in the conventional-conforming market during the second quarter of 2018 but made up some of it in an unlikely sector: jumbo originations. Jumbo production by correspondent lenders increased by a huge 63.7 percent from the first to the second quarter of 2018, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis. The data come from Inside Mortgage Finance surveys from lenders ... [Includes two data charts]

For nonbank servicers, “the future looks good,” according to S&P Global Ratings. Industry analysts note that nonbank servicers have improved their servicing practices and they could be helped by rising interest rates. While servicing volume among nonbanks boomed in the years after the financial crisis, S&P said the firms hadn’t made adequate adjustments to how borrowers are treated. “Many nonbanks previously exhibited, in our view, a more ‘consumer finance’ mentality to servicing ...