The fourth quarter of 2018 was one of the hardest times in recent memory for companies to generate a profit from their mortgage banking operations. The Mortgage Bankers Association reported that only 44.0% of participants in its quarterly performance survey managed to report positive pre-tax net income for the final three months of last year. This appears to be the lowest share of firms producing positive results in many years, lower than the 54.2% share back in the first quarter of 2014 ...
The wholesale-broker channel appears to be gaining ground in the tightly competitive primary market in agency conforming mortgages. A new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis reveals that broker originations accounted for 12.5% of single-family loans pooled in agency mortgage-backed securities during the first quarter of 2019. That represented a substantial leap of 1.3 percentage points from the broker share of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae ... [Includes two data charts.]
The flow of single-family home loans into agency mortgage-backed securities fell sharply in the first quarter of 2019. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae produced $231.38 billion of new single-family MBS during the first three months of 2019, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance ranking and analysis.
The market leaders in rating non-agency MBS and non-mortgage ABS retained their top rankings in 2018. S&P Global was the top rating service in the ABS market, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS market analysis, after rating $142.24 billion of new issuance, an 11.6% percent increase from 2017. [Includes two data charts.]
Mortgage originators licensed by state regulators produced fewer loans in 2018 than they had in the previous year but still took more market share away from depositories. A new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis of call-report data from banks, credit unions and the National Multistate Licensing System found that state-licensed nonbanks accounted for 54.8% of mortgage originations last year. That was up 1.8 percentage points from 2017. [Includes two data charts.]
Home mortgages that fail one of the basic tests to be classified as a qualified mortgage have become an increasingly large part of the agency market over the past few years, a new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis reveals. [Includes one data chart.]