We received delinquency and forbearance information for the GSE pools late last night. By balance, the pools with such information cover over 99% of FHL and 92% of FNM pools, which is satisfactory.
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In terms of delinquency, Fannie Mae reported higher delinquency rate than Freddie Mac, which is in line with the relatively higher DTI’s seen in FNM deliveries in recent years. Freddie’s 30d delinquency rate reported in May was 2.47%, about 0.4% below the same figure for Fannie Mae .

​Mortgage lenders obtain loans through three channels 1) The retail channel through which they originate loans, 2) The wholesale channel through which they purchase loans that are originated by other financial institutions, and 3) the broker channel through which they acquire loans that are originated by the lender through an independent mortgage banker not affiliated with the originating institution. Channels from outside the selling institution are called Third Party Originations or TPO’s. Every month Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac report the selling institution of every loan delivered to them, and the channel by which the loan was obtained. Over the last couple of years there has been a notable rise in the share of the broker channel. This note looks at recent trends and looks for market segments in which these are most pronounced, with an emphasis on the broker channel. Table 1 shows the market shares of sales to the GSE’s by channel.

We have written extensively on the mortgage market impact of the Covid-19 crisis, most recently on the first signs of delinquencies in the loans in the reference pools of the Freddie Mac Structured Agency Credit Risk (STACR) program[1]. In that post we noted the dispersion in 30-day average loan delinquencies by state for May 2020. In this note we look at the distribution of delinquencies in the same month across each of the 28 deals issued to date. We can see a distinct increase in the rate of delinquencies from the onset of the program through 2019, before falling early this year. What can account for this pattern?

In the five-year period from early 2013 to early 2019, we notice that there was a trend loosening in credit standards as measured by the share of loans in Agency securitized pools with debt-to-income ratios in excess of 45. The trend was exacerbated in 2018 due to rising mortgage rates weighing on mortgage production volumes. As rates fell back during the course of 2019, pressure to keep lending standards so loose eased, and fewer high-LTV loans were delivered to the Agencies.

​It seems natural to ask if this pattern spills over to the loans in the STACR pools. The chart below shows the share of such loans in high-LTV STACR issues since 2013, plotted against the 30-day May DQ rate for each.

​The loan-level data releases we receive early each month contain delinquency data for Government programs such as FHA and VA, but no such information is provided by the GSE’s. However, late in the month data is provided for the reference loans in the Credit Risk Sharing (CRT) programs. However, data for the most recent month is only provided by the Freddie Mac Structured Agency Credit Risk (STACR) program as the comparable Fannie Mae data is released with a 1-month lag. The latest STACR data shows the 30day delinquency rate for Freddie CRT pools went up from 0.76% in April to 4.20% this month. The states with the highest delinquency rates are:

​And the states with the lowest delinquency rates are:

​The state rankings are broadly in line with those observed in the Government data. For example, the top three states in terms of 30-day dq’s for the FHA program are New York (14.4%), NJ (13.9%) and Puerto Rico (13.2%). In general, DQ’s for FHA are higher than those for the GSE’s due to the broader credit criteria available in Government programs.
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Delinquencies are important in the CRT program because they have the potential to turn into losses shared with private investors. The forbearance programs will delay but not completely prevent this transmission. The ultimate extent of investor losses depends on the duration of the Covid-19 crisis, and ensuing policy actions.

As stay-at-home orders commenced in most of states during the Covid-19 pandemic, home sales have been heavily impacted. A good timely indicator of home sales is Redfin pending sales. Monthly average seven-days total pending sales, which measure the number of total homes that went under contract in the prior seven days[1], show normal home sales seasonal patterns from Jan 2019 to Feb 2020. However, the number suddenly declined about 14% from 42,978 in Mar 2020 to 36,794 in Apr 2020[2], reflecting the big hit caused by the pandemic. 
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What will MBS issuance look like in the near future? Using our powerful data analytics tool Cohort Analyzer, we easily summarized the Agency (GNM, FNM, FHL) MBS Issuance for home purchases from Jan. 2019 to May 2020(month to date as of the 15th business day of the month). The chart below shows the clear leading  relationship between pending sales and over MBS purchase issurance. Thus, we can expect that the decline we observed in pending sales in April is likely to show somewhat softer MBS purchase issurance in the early summer. Continued record-low interest rates, perhaps combined with  gradual reopening in some states, should we help to support purchase issuance as the summer progresses. However, given the uncertainty surrounding the reopening process, it is still to early to be confident that the impact of the Covid-19 virus on the housing market and purchase mortgage production has formed a bottom.

Previously we have noted the connection between aggregate unemployment and delinquencies in the mortgage market[1]. With the release of state-wide delinquencies for FHA loans earlier this month, we can dig deeper into the connection between mortgage distress and the Covid-19 crisis. Based on data released by the Covid Tracking Project[2], and the Census Bureau on population, we can correlate infection rates with mortgage delinquency rates.

There is a lot of confusion in the market regarding the interpretation of new data released by the two GSE’s, the delinquency distribution and forbearance distribution for some new pools. The data available so far are very limited, but we can draw some tentative conclusions from what we have.  
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As of this morning we found 11 pools with both a delinquency distribution and a forbearance distribution from the eMBS data feed.  For 6 of them, forbearance numbers are the same as 30d delinquency numbers.  For 5 of them, forbearance numbers are bigger than the delinquency numbers, and often by a significant margin.

We previously noted that the recent surge in bank deposits, that is related to rising risk aversion associated with the onset of the Covid-19 crisis, serves to support bank investment in agency Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS)[1]. A look at recent Federal Reserve Board data reveals that growing MBS demand is not just the result of greater deposits, but also is due to a desire on the part of depository institutions to reduce risk in the mortgage space.