from ZeroHedge:

Earlier this week, we highlighted the fact that numerous mortgage-related companies were facing considerable – and in some cases existential – crises in their day-to-day operations amid margin calls, illiquidity, and a drying up of demand for non-agency products thanks to The Fed’s intervention.

First, its was AG Mortgage Investment Trust which last Friday said it failed to meet some margin calls and doesn’t expect to be able to meet future margin calls with its current financing. Then it was TPG RE Finance Trust which also hit a liquidity wall and could not repay its lenders. Then, on Monday it was first Invesco, then ED&F Man Capital, and then  the mortgage mayhem took down MFA Financial, which stated “due to the turmoil in the financial markets resulting from the global pandemic of the COVID-19 virus, the Company and its subsidiaries have received an unusually high number of margin calls from financing counterparties, and have also experienced higher funding costs in respect of its repurchase agreements.”

And now that mortgage-mayhem has impacted one of the largest U.S. mortgage firms catering to riskier borrowers.

Earlier in the week, we mentioned Angel Oak Mortgage Solutions – which specializes in so-called non-qualified mortgages that can’t be sold to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac – pointing out that the company would pause all originations of loans for two weeks “due to the constant shifts and the inability to appropriately evaluate credit risk.”

And now Sreeni Prabhu, co-chief executive officer of the firm’s parent, Angel Oak Cos., is slashing 70% of the comany’s workforce (almost 200 of its 275 employees).

“The world has dramatically changed,” Prabhu said.

“We have to slow down and re-underwrite in the new world that we’re in. That’s going to take some time.”

Bloomberg reports that Angel Oak is primarily known for its riskier lending arm, which is one of the leaders in funding non-qualified mortgages. Such loans include those made to borrowers who verify their incomes with bank statements instead of tax returns and others who may have recently filed for bankruptcy or had a previous foreclosure that hurt their credit scores.

Angel Oak Mortgage Solutions funded some $3.3 billion of non-QM loans in 2019, making it one of the biggest lenders in the space. In January, Angel Oak’s mortgage units said they planned to fund more than $8 billion of home loans in 2020, but the total is now likely to be perhaps a quarter of that, Prabhu said.

The coronavirus pandemic has brought non-QM lending to a virtual standstill industrywide. Many non-QM borrowers are self-employed, making them among the hardest hit by a broad slowdown in business activity.

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