With the Fed starting their tightening cycle and reducing balance sheet, mortgage rates have begun rising. Since late summer, 30-year conforming rates have risen more than 100bp, with 75bp of that occurring since the end of December. The recent flight-to-quality rally has temporarily eased that, but the overall trend remains in place for higher mortgage rates.

With this pivot, mortgage investors have switched from focusing on prepayment protection to mitigating extension risk. In this post, we offer analysis on extension risk and turnover speeds for various out-of-the-money Fannie and Freddie cohorts.[1]

In the chart below, we first focus on out-of-the-money prepays on lower loan balance loans. For this analysis, we analyzed speeds on loans that were 24 to 48 months seasoned. We further grouped the loan balance stories into meta-groups, as the traditional groupings of “85k-Max”, etc, showed little difference in out-of-the-money speeds. When compared to loans with balances above 250k, speeds on lower loan balance loans were a scant 1-2 CPR faster than borrowers with larger loan balances, when prevailing rates were 25bp to 100bp higher than the borrower’s note rate.

We next compare borrowers in low FICO pools, high LTV pools, and 100% investor pools. Speeds on low-FICO pools (blue) offer some extension protection due to higher involuntary speeds. At the other end, loans in 100% investor pools were dramatically slower than non-spec pools when out-of-the money.

Finally, we look at the behavior of borrowers in non-spec pools segregated by loan purpose, again controlling for loan age. Borrowers with refi loans pay significantly faster than purchase loans when only slightly out-of-the money. As rates continue to rise, refi speeds converge to purchase loans at 75bp out of the money and pay slower when 75-100bp out of the money, presumably due to a stronger lock-in effect.

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We also separated these non-spec borrowers by originators, grouping the largest banks and non-bank originators together. Out-of-the-money speeds on refi loans were significantly faster for loans originated by non-bank originators (blue and green) versus those originated by banks (red and orange). Speeds on purchase loans were only 1-2 CPR faster for non-banks versus banks and were omitted from this graph for readability.

In the current geopolitical climate, rates may continue to drop over the short term. But given the Fed’s tightening bias, it’s prudent to consider extension risk when looking at MBS pools, in both specified and non-specified pools.

[1] For investors interested in GNMA analysis, please contact RiskSpan