(Updates with analyst comments and adds details throughout.)
DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
Standard & Poor's cut its ratings on about $30.9 billion of
bonds backed by mortgage loans issued to prime borrowers for
high-priced homes in 2007 as this housing segment has seen a sharp
rise in delinquencies.
Banks and lenders were expected to have tightened their
underwriting standards in 2007 as the meltdown in subprime loans
was already underway at that time. However, broader economic
factors and the continued drop in home prices have led to an
increase in homeowners not paying their mortgages, especially among
those who bought a home between 2005 and 2007.
This deterioration in the loan performance has translated to
higher loss expectations on bonds that are made from pools of such
loans.
"Performance measures for 2006 and 2007 securitizations across
the residential mortgage-backed securities landscape are much worse
than for any previous [year]," said Walt Schmidt, a mortgage
strategist with FTN Financial in Chicago.
"So, ... the resulting losses for collateral originated for
those [years] will be much worse than for others," he said.
Based on these worsening expectations, S&P on Monday lowered
ratings on 620 classes from 49 transactions and removed 85 of them
from watch for possible downgrade. Many were lowered from AAA
status.
The collateral on the downgraded deals includes both prime jumbo
fixed-rate and adjustable-rate mortgages on one- to four-family
residential properties. The downgraded transactions were part of
deals put together by Bank of America, Bear Stearns and Continental
Home Loans.
S&P affirmed its ratings on 186 classes from 28 transactions
issued between 2006 and 2007, including 23 downgraded deals. It
also removed three of the affirmed ratings from watch for
downgrade.
Jumbo loans, which are a minimum of $417,000, generally carry
higher interest rates because they are too big to be guaranteed by
Fannie Mae (FNM) or Freddie Mac (FRE). S&P said it expects a
40% loss severity on these loans issued in 2006 and 2007.
S&P has said it expects loan losses to mirror 1999, which
before 2005 was the worst year in the past decade in terms of
foreclosures on homes with jumbo loans. The ratings agency expects
the 2007 losses to top the losses on the 1999 loans, but expects
the losses' timing to be more similar to that year than any
other.
The ratings agency added that the higher loss expectation means
that the existing cushion to protect bondholders from losses may
not be sufficient, which prompted the downgrade of these
transactions.
-By John Kell, Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-5285;
john.kell@dowjones.com
(Prabha Natarajan contributed to this report.)