With the expiration of forbearance programs underway, there is an interesting question about how loans exiting these programs will perform once they are resecuritized. For Ginnie Mae programs, these are either loans that exit forbearance with a partial claim or receive a permanent mod under the various waterfall options in the FHA or VA programs. In our previous blogs[1], we have noted MOD and RG loans are becoming a significant portion of loans delivered to newly issued Ginnie Mae pools.

In a recent post, we mentioned that the 24-month timeline for the purchase of delinquent loans out of pools implied that this activity would not pick up until April 2020[1]. However, some leading indicator of loan disposition was available through the release of trial modification data in the Borrower Assistance Plan (BAP) field released in the monthly Agency disclosures. Once loans have completed three months of successful payments in this plan, they are eligible to be purchased out for the commencement of a permanent modification, and eventual resecuritization.
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A loan in trial modification plan (trial mod) can transit into the following state the next month:

1. Mortgagor payoff: this is an unlikely outcome, as loans in trial mod are troubled loans.
2. Repurchase: Being repurchased out of the pool --- this typically should not happen after giving the loan 3 months in the trial.
3. Forbearance: also unlikely, most loans in trial mod should have used forbearance plan already.
4. Trial Period Plan: loans in trial mod for just 1 or 2 months should stay in trial mod for a least another month.
5. No Plan: trial mod terminated however did not result in a repurchase immediately.
6. Other or N/A: status not available.

The number of loans in these programs continues to grow, standing at 37,957 in February 2022, with a balance of about $8.3 billion, up from 9,911 and $2.1 billion in March 2021. The evolution of the disposition of loans is shown in the following chart:

On February 15, 2022, Ginnie Mae announced it was adding a “Green Status” field to its multifamily disclosures, “giving investors information that supports their sustainable investing decisions and solutions.”[1] Specifically, “The new securities disclosure allows investors to easily identify multifamily mortgage-backed securities whose collateral meets the requirements of FHA’s Multifamily “Green” Environmental Product Programs. This will assist investors in acquiring suitable investments to meet their ESG mandates and improve the liquidity of the securities in the secondary trading to other ESG investors.”

There are several broad observations that can be immediately taken from the new disclosure.
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First, Green loans tend to be larger than others. As of February 2022, over 12% of loans in Ginnie Mae multi-family pools by loan count contain the green flag, accounting for almost 28% of UPB. As a result, green loans stand about twice as big as those which do not fall in this category. The bulk of these units are market rate apartments meeting the Green building requirements or loans in the affordability categories accounting for less than 1% of both total outstanding loan count and UPB.

​We’ve noticed that the prevalence of appraisal waivers for purchase mortgages within the eligible population peaked in Q4 last year, and recently has gone into steep decline. Our working thesis as to what is behind this trend is that lenders are getting concerned about the rapid pace of home price increases and want the additional security associated with an on-site appraisal. If this is indeed the case, we should see a greater decline in this share for larger mortgages than for smaller ones. So we break up the universe by GSE, and by loans above and below 2021’s conforming loan limit of $548,250:

Recursion released the roaster of  TOP 10 GNM  issuers and GSE lenders of February  2022.

​Mortgage issuers delivered 186K loans for a combined $49B to Ginnie Mae program. Issuance volume dropped $9B from January 2022.
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Here’s a list of top 10 GNM mortgage issuers.

​Mortgage lender delivered 476K loans for a combined $138B to GSE program. Issuance volume dropped $41B from January 2022.
 
Here’s a list of Top 10 GSE mortgage lenders.

We observe these trends by tracking our monthly data reports. If you are interested in the outlook for mortgage market developments, reach out to inquiry@recursionco.com and subscribe to Recursion Reports!