In its heyday, S&P used to rate more than 90 percent of new issuance of non-agency MBS, but in 2013 it accounted for just 40.0 percent of the market by dollar volume.
The top three HEL lenders in the market – Wells Fargo, Bank of America and Chase – originated a combined $17.8 billion in home-equity loans last year, but they still saw a $32.1 billion decline in their total holdings of HELOCs and closed-end seconds.
Nonbanks owned servicing rights on $1.136 trillion of securitized mortgages at the beginning of 2010, a figure that has swelled to $1.906 trillion as of the end of last year.
At the end of 2013, the Fed’s holdings topped the commercial banking industry’s total MBS portfolio of $1.369 trillion, and it accounted for 26.6 percent of the $5.601 billion of agency single-family MBS outstanding at that time, according to Inside MBS & ABS.
The only sector that has a higher securitization rate is the government-insured market, where Ginnie Mae production represented 98.5 percent of FHA and VA lending.
The five largest REIT MBS investors all reported double-digit drops during the final three months of 2013, while the mid-range companies generally had smaller declines and three smaller firms actually grew their portfolios.
It may be temporary, but residential mortgage debt outstanding fell in the fourth quarter. For buyers of servicers that means less product is available (in theory).
By itself, BofA accounted for 79.3 percent of the $606.3 billion shrinkage in commercial bank MSR portfolios during 2013. Where did all that servicing go to?