As recently as three years ago, few companies were willing to finance originations of nonprime mortgages, either via warehouse funding or acquiring the paper as whole loans. Daniel Perl, CEO of Citadel Servicing, said there are currently a number of Wall Street companies and other firms that will provide a certain amount of liquidity for one to three years, while demand for whole loans and MBS is also increasing. “There’s a lot to be said for this market today that you couldn’t say three years ago,” he said earlier this month during a webinar hosted by Inside Mortgage Finance. Tom Hutchens, a senior vice president of sales and marketing at Angel Oak Mortgage Solutions, said...

A boom in ABS backed by unsecured consumer loans requires closer scrutiny, according to analysts at Fitch Ratings. Marketplace lenders have boosted the issuance of such ABS in recent years, though the rating service warned that deal performance is difficult to predict. “Many firms in this space have legitimate value propositions and apparent technological advantages,” Fitch said. “However, they have yet to prove their underwriting merit.” Since September 2013, at least 31 ABS totaling $4.60 billion backed by consumer loans from marketplace lenders have been issued...

Fitch Ratings was the most active rating service in the sluggish non-agency MBS market through the first half of 2016, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS ranking. Standard & Poor’s was the top rating agency in the more active non-mortgage ABS market. Fitch rated just seven non-agency MBS issued during the first six months of the year, which totaled $4.74 billion in volume. While that equaled 30.9 percent of total non-agency MBS issuance for the period, many deals were private placements without ratings. Fitch’s share of rated issuance was 55.4 percent. DBRS ranked...[Includes two data tables]

The scratch-and-dent market for residential loans that have TRID-related errors is still alive and (mostly) well, even though originators have had almost a year to adjust to the new disclosure regime introduced by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. “This market will never be exhausted,” said Jeff Bode, chairman and CEO of Mid America Mortgage, Addison, TX, one of the most active buyers of mortgages that have errors related to consumer disclosures tied to the Truth in Lending Act and the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act. Of course, it’s...

A strong tide of refinance activity lifted mortgage origination volume in 2015, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data released late this week by federal regulators. Aggregate national data released by the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council show a total of $1.651 trillion in first-lien mortgage originations for home purchase and refinance. That was up 32.9 percent from 2014 but failed to ... [Includes one data chart]

The inherent complexity and ambiguity of many of the provisions of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s integrated disclosure rule are stymying the ability of technology to aid in lender compliance, top industry experts said this week. Speaking during a webinar sponsored earlier this week by Inside Mortgage Finance, former CFPB official Benjamin Olson, now a partner with the BuckleySandler law firm in Washington, DC, detailed the obstacles that lenders are confronted with ...

The Department of Veterans Affairs is drafting a new policy to address ongoing confusion about its Interest Rate Reduction Refinance Loan program and ease investor anxiety. The uncertainty among VA lenders stems from the treatment of IRRRLs under the VA’s interim final rule defining what constitutes a “qualified mortgage.” That rule took...

A task force convened by the Mortgage Bankers Association proposed universal principles for loan modification programs across government guarantors, the government-sponsored enterprises and perhaps non-agency mortgages. The “One Modification” standards published late last week aim to provide servicers with a “cohesive framework” to complete loan mods when the Home Affordable Modification Program largely ends after this year. “MBA’s task force recognizes...

Five years have passed since the Federal Housing Finance Agency filed suit against 18 Wall Street firms and banks for peddling nonprime MBS to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the years leading up to the housing crisis. All of the defendants have settled or lost with one glaring exception: Royal Bank of Scotland. As for when (and if) RBS will settle, that’s a different and complicated matter. The bank is presently owned by the British government, which took control of it during the financial crisis. In other words, any settlement might entail taxpayer money and cause a political controversy in the U.K. And the bill could be...

In a potential legal coup for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shareholders, Federal Claims Court Judge Margaret Sweeney ordered the U.S. Treasury Department and Federal Housing Finance Agency to turn over another large batch of documents in relation to the Fairholme Funds Inc. v. United States, et al. net worth sweep case. Sweeney this week forced the government agencies to produce more documents, close to 60 this time, for the plaintiff’s attorneys. The agencies have attempted to keep the various memos, emails, presentations and other communications hidden under executive privilege. Shareholders say...