All Things in Moderation

Vital Statistics:

Stocks are flattish after the jobs report. Bonds and MBS are flat as well.

Jobs report data dump:

• Nonfarm payrolls down 710,000
• Unemployment rate 4.4%
• Labor force participation rate 62.7%
• Average hourly earnings up 3.1%

Job losses were concentrated in the service sector, with leisure and hospitality losing 459k jobs. Health care lost 61k jobs (mainly support people) and construction was down as well. FWIW, the 710k number is probably not representative of what is really going on – it will be the cumulative weekly initial jobless claims, which are at something like 10 million.

The government is supposed to launch its SBA loan program next week. Apparently many banks will be sitting out. The biggest concern will be reps and warrants, especially when it comes to preventing fraud. The banking system remembers well when the Obama Administration used the False Claims Act to extract massive penalties with FHA lending. Many of those banks, like JPM, never returned to the sector. Also, the requirements to prevent terrorist financing and money laundering, which under the best circumstances takes weeks to do. Finally, the rate the banks will be forced to charge will be too low and will cost them money. But there will have to be reps and warrants relief to get banks to participate. They remember what happened in 2009 and 2010 too well.

All of the Fed’s buying has driven its balance sheet up to 5.86 trillion in assets. Before 2008, it was about $800 billion.

While most of us are focused on what COVID-19 is doing to the residential market, the commercial market is even worse. The CMBS market is completely frozen. Multifamily, retail, office tenants etc are simply not paying rent right now, and that is going to cascade onto the balance sheets of the banks.

There had been talk of a Fed facility to allow servicers to borrow to make advances to bondholders. It looks like that isn’t going to happen, at least not yet. Treasury wants to get a read on how many borrowers actually take advantage of the program. The problem is that if you tell someone that they can skip the next few payments on their mortgage, with no hit to their credit rating, no penalties, and the missed payments will just get tacked on to the end of the mortgage, who isn’t going to take advantage of it? A dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow.

Moody’s has downgraded the non-bank mortgage sector from “stable” to “negative” as the financial markets seize up. We have seen the big non-agency mortgage REITs like New Rez, Two Harbors, and Redwood make distressed asset sales in order to meet margin calls.

Filed under: Economy, Morning Report | 3 Comments »

Vital Statistics:

Stocks are flattish after a record 6.6 million people file for unemployment. Bonds and MBS are flat.

So, with last week’s revised filing of 3.3 million, a total of 10 million people have lost their jobs over the Coronavirus. Compared to the roughly 200k cases in the US, that works out to be 50 jobs lost per case. That puts the cost of social distancing in perspective.

Construction spending fell 1.3% MOM and rose 6% YOY. These are February numbers, so they were still largely unaffected by the COVID-19 crisis.

Pretty much everyone has gone to 680 minimum FICOs on FHA loans now. Secondary bulk buyers are pulling back their bids for all loans as well. Everybody is padding margins to take into account the various risks in the financial system.

Good piece on mortgage forbearance and what needs to be done. Bottom line, you can’t just stop paying your mortgage and assume everything is fine. Call your servicer before you start missing payments. FHFA Director Mark Calabria estimates that 700,000 mortgage will need forbearance. Given that 10 million people lost their jobs in the past two weeks, that number is probably way too low.

New York State has loosened restrictions on in-person showings, appraisals and inspections.

Rent was due yesterday for the nation’s renters. Washington is looking for a way to get some relief to them. New York State is considering allowing the security deposit to take the place of rent. I know that Fannie and Fred are allowing forbearance for multifam investors, but I have not seen anything for 2-4 units specifically. The multifam relief is conditional on a freeze of evictions.

Filed under: Economy, Morning Report | 34 Comments »

Vital Statistics:

Stock indices are lower as we kick off the second quarter. Bonds and MBS are up small.

The Fed took up just 53% of the bonds offered to them yesterday. It sounds like they are backing off on their aggressive buying which was triggering margin calls throughout the industry.

Speaking of margin calls, it looks like New Rez has a deal to buy $6.1 billion of non-agency bonds. No price was indicated, but a couple days ago New Rez cut its dividend by 90% and said that book value was down about 25% – 30% from the 12/31 mark.

Impac recently said it would suspend lending operations for two weeks after a whole loan investor went radio-silent about its commitment to purchase whole loans. They have let go most of their employees.

I can’t see how the non-QM market comes out of this as anything more than a portfolio product for banks who have the werewithall to hold the paper. While I would bet the vast majority of these non-QM loans are money good and will perform as expected, they simply aren’t suitable for repo financing. Securitize them or hold them.

The economy lost 27,000 jobs in March, according to the ADP jobs report. In the previous report the economy gained 183k. Small business bore the brunt of the job losses, losing 90k. The Street is expecting a -150k print for Friday’s job report. with the unemployment rate increasing from 3.5% to 3.9%. The government just passed a stimulus bill with aid to help small businesses get through this period. Many are hoping to hold on until the cavalry arrives.

Mortgage applications rose 15% last week as purchases fell 11% and refis rose 26%.

Filed under: Economy, Morning Report | 18 Comments »