What is a mortgage pool?

Many times, when we are trying to learn more about the real estate world, we see many different words and expressions we are familiar to it, but do we really know what they mean? Really sure? Today, we are going to talk about mortgage pools. A mortgage pool is a group of mortgages in a mortgage-backed security (MBS) and held in trust as collateral for the issuance of this MBS.

Some people also know them as “pass-throughs” and trade in the to-be-announced (TBA) forward market. Click here, if you want more information about them.

How does it work? Here is an example:

Once a lender finishes a mortgage transaction, it usually sells the mortgage to another unit or entity. The entities or units that buy mortgages let’s say, Company A and Company B set hundreds of mortgages together into a mortgage pool. Then is when the mortgage pool acts as collateral for a mortgage-backed security.

Why is it important?

Pass-throughs or mortgage pools are involved with mortgages with close to the same maturity and interest rate. A MBS is collateralized by a mortgage pool. Mortgages pool usually have similar characteristics.

People have to be careful to not confuse MBSs with CDOs (collateralized debt obligations) because the last one is collateralized by a pool of loans with varying characteristics and they might have different terms (10-year, 15-year, 30-year) and adjustable rates.