While delinquencies on non-QMs spiked in the early days of the pandemic, many of those borrowers returned to making payments or cured their debt without the loan holders suffering large losses.

Aggregation of non-agency mortgages isn’t generating the types of returns seen in 2021, but it’s still a good business, according to officials at MFA Financial.

AG Mortgage Investment Trust acquired $2.5 billion of non-agency loans last year, about half of them during the fourth quarter. The REIT is targeting returns of around 15% from non-agency MBS issuance.

Western Asset Mortgage Capital took a third consecutive loss during the October-December period as it works to shift its investment focus to non-QMs and other non-agency products.

Goldman Sachs is set to issue its first expanded-credit MBS, with four other firms also offering deals in the past two weeks. In the prime non-agency space, JPMorgan Chase has another large offering.

Champions Funding enters the wholesale market for non-QMs; Angel Oak Mortgage Solutions expands the types of properties eligible for its investor cashflow program; LendingOne is offering a new single-family rental product; DBRS approves MetaSource as due diligence provider.

Annaly Capital Management is increasing the amount of capital it dedicates to aggregating non-agency mortgages and issuing MBS.

With traditional refi business slowing, New Residential plans to increase originations of various non-agency products.

Expanded-credit mortgages and business-purpose lending are set to play a bigger role in Redwood’s operations. Third-party investments also generated strong returns for the REIT in the fourth quarter.

This week, Annaly, the Change Company, Credit Suisse and Lone Star Funds all offered their second individual expanded-credit MBS of the year. Activity is also humming along in the prime non-agency market.