From Inside Mortgage Finance
Mike SP
A hefty $28.27 billion of non-agency MBS came to the market in the first quarter of 2024, signaling a potential rebound for the sector.
First-quarter issuance was up 88.7% from the final three months of 2023, and some 75.5% ahead of the pace set a year ago. Impressive gains were racked up in all the major non-agency MBS categories.
To be clear, non-agency MBS issuance volume was higher in 2021, averaging nearly $43 billion per quarter. Cracks started to appear in the third quarter of 2022 before the bottom fell out in the final lap, and average quarterly production rebounded to about $15 billion last year.
Expanded-credit deals were the biggest source of new issuance in the first quarter, totaling $10.65 billion. The collateral is a mix of investor-property loans, most of which are exempt from qualified-mortgage standards, and non-QM loans with alternative documentation or product features.
For full details and exclusive non-agency MBS issuance tables, see the new edition of Inside MBS & ABS, now available online.