Inspection waivers have been available on agency-backed mortgages since 2017, but in this era of social distancing, the convenience of forgoing an inspection looks set to become an important feature in mortgage origination. In this post, we compare prepayments on loans with and without inspections.
Broadly, FNMA allows inspection waivers on purchase single-family mortgages up to 80% LTV, and no cash-out refi with up to 90% LTV (75% if the refi is an investment property). Inspection waivers are available on cash-out refis for primary residences with LTV up to 70%, and investment properties with LTV up to 60%.
Inspection waivers were first introduced in mid-2017. In 2018, the proportion of loans with inspection waivers held steady around 6% but started a steady uptick in the middle of 2019, long before the pandemic made social distancing a must.[1]
In the current environment, market participants should expect a further uptick in loans with waivers as refis increase and as the GSEs consider relaxing restrictions around qualifying loans. In short, PIW will start to become a key factor in loan origination. Given this, we examine the different behavior between loans with waivers and loans with inspections.
In the chart below, we show prepayment speeds on 30yr borrowers with “generic” mortgages,[2] with and without waivers. When 100bp in the money, “generic” loans with a waiver paid a full 15 CPR faster than loans with an inspection appraisal. Additionally, the waiver S-curve is steeper. Waiver loans that are 50-75bp in the money outpaced appraised houses by 20 CPR.
Next, we look at PIW by origination channel. For retail origination, loans with waivers paid only 10-15 CPR faster than loans with inspections (first graph). In contrast, correspondent loans with a waiver paid 15-20 CPR faster versus loans with an inspection (second graph).
We also looked at loan purpose. Purchase loans with a waiver paid only 10 CPR faster than comparable loans purchase loans with an inspection (first graph), whereas refi loans paid 25 CPR faster when 50-75bp in the money.
We also examined servicer-specific behavior for PIW. We saw both a difference in the proportional volume of waivers, with some originators producing a heavy concentration of waivers, as well as a difference in speeds. The details are lengthy, please contact us on how to run this query in the Edge platform.
In summary, loans with inspection waivers pay faster than loans without waivers, but the differentials vary greatly by channel and loan purpose. With property inspection waivers rising as a percentage of overall origination, these differences will begin to play a larger role in forming overall prepayment expectations.
If you interested in seeing variations on this theme, contact us. Using RS Edge, we can examine any loan characteristic and generate a S-curve, aging curve, or time series.
[1] Refi loans almost entirely drove this uptick in waivers, see RiskSpan for a breakdown of refi loans with waivers.
[2] For this query, we searched for loans delivered to 30yr deliverable pools with loan balance greater than $225k, FICO greater than 700, and LTV below 80%.
