The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s denial of favorable capital treatment to a non-agency MBS issued by JPMorgan Chase last year could hinder efforts aimed at convincing banks to return to the non-agency MBS market, according to industry analysts. JPMorgan Chase issued two unique non-agency MBS last year with a total unpaid principal balance of $4.53 billion. The so-called portfolio risk-transfer deals accounted for a whopping 48.6 percent of the prime non-agency MBS issued in 2016. Chase packaged...
Wall Street giant The Blackstone Group this week revealed its investment in “fix and flip” lenders B2R Finance, Charlotte, and Jordan Capital Finance, Chicago, spurring talk that eventually the firm may enter the fledgling nonprime residential market. One nonprime executive, requesting anonymity, told Inside MBS & ABS that he has had several discussions with Blackstone-related companies about partnering with his shop. Issuing MBS is one of the company’s goals, he said, adding: “They want in.” Over the past three years, Blackstone has made...
Freddie Mac reported a net income of $4.85 billion in the fourth quarter, more than double its earnings from the previous quarter and lifting its full-year income to $7.82 billion. The government-sponsored enterprise released its earnings this week, posting one of its best profits ever in the fourth quarter. Net income for the quarter was fueled in part by gains on derivatives which amounted to $6.38 billion. “Interest rates went up an unusually large amount in the fourth quarter, therefore you saw an unusually large gain in the accounting,” Freddie CEO Donald Layton told Inside MBS & ABS. Freddie also reported...
Now that investment banker Steven Mnuchin has been installed as the Treasury secretary, work can begin on finding a solution to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the giant government guarantors that serve as the linchpin to housing and mortgage markets. For the most part, senior mortgage officials who have been in the business for a decade or more applauded President Trump’s choice of Mnuchin, pointing to his days as the head of MBS trading at Goldman Sachs & Co. “At the very least, this is...
Weighing in on President Trump’s recent executive order related to the Dodd-Frank Act, analysts at Moody’s Investors Service said ditching the major mortgage regulations promulgated under the law would be negative for residential MBS unless it’s done carefully. “Any significant repeal of the Dodd-Frank Act’s mortgage-related provisions without effective alternatives would weaken residential RMBS credit quality because these provisions have strengthened the credit quality of mortgage originations, improved servicing practices and bolstered the credit integrity of RMBS structures,” the analysts said in a new report issued earlier this week. Their report then detailed...
The chatter about the Federal Reserve shrinking its massive $4.5 trillion balance sheet and its huge $1.7 trillion portfolio of agency MBS has continued in recent days, with one Fed official talking up the idea and another describing how the U.S. central bank plans to do it. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard said in a speech last week that the Fed could begin normalizing its balance sheet. “The Fed’s balance sheet has been an important monetary policy tool during the period of near-zero policy rates,” Bullard said. Thus far, the Fed’s Open Market Committee has not set...
A revised version of the Financial CHOICE Act could make changes to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that are so significant that other provisions in the bill aiming to loosen standards for qualified mortgages might not be necessary. Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-TX, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, introduced HR 5983, the Financial CHOICE Act, in September and the committee approved the bill largely on a party-line vote that month. The bill covered a wide ...
The spike in FHA delinquencies in the fourth quarter of 2016 justifies the Trump administration’s decision last month to suspend and review the outgoing administration’s lowering of FHA mortgage insurance premiums, said House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-TX. Commenting on the Mortgage Bankers Association’s quarterly delinquency rate survey, Hensarling praised President Trump’s decision to set aside the 25-basis-point premium reduction, which Inside FHA/VA Lending reported first on Jan. 6, 2017. “Lowering premiums at this time was a big mistake,” said Hensarling. “The sudden increase in delinquencies makes it clear that President Trump was absolutely right to undo the previous administration’s irresponsible action.” Hensarling recalled that in 2013 “taxpayers had to spend $1.7 billion to bail out the FHA.” Going forward, the FHA must be fiscally sound, with a ...
Claims relating to housing and mortgage fraud represented a huge chunk of the amount recovered by the federal government under the False Claims Act last year. An analysis by the WilmerHale law firm found that the Department of Justice continued to give high priority to FCA investigations and prosecutions in 2016, resulting in more than $4.76 billion in settlements and judgments, nearly $1 billion more than in 2015. The increase also reflected a continued focus on financial institutions and the mortgage lending industry, with approximately $1.6 billion in recoveries last year, the law firm said. The DOJ, working on referrals from the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s inspector general, has used the FCA effectively as a tool in prosecuting FHA-related fraud cases against lenders. The DOJ ...
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