Redwood Trust (RWT) will sell a $290 million residential mortgage-backed security backed primarily by jumbo loans, according to a prospectus filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission Tuesday. It’s the first such RMBS this year. This deal will be the second from Redwood and the only two private-label RMBS transactions since the financial crisis of 2008. In April 2010, Redwood closed a $237.8 million jumbo RMBS deal. When the Treasury Department released its white paper on the future of housing finance last week, it proposed allowing the maximum loan limit at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to expire and drop in October to give the private market more room for securitizations in the jumbo space. Roughly two-thirds of the 303 mortgages were originated by First Republic Bank and the rest by PHH Mortgage Corp., according to the filing. The deal holds an aggregate principal balance of $296.3 million and an average balance of more than $977,000. The loans are a mix of 30-year fixed-rate mortgages and hybrid 10-year fixed. The master servicer on the deal will be Wells Fargo (WFC), and Citigroup (C) was named the trustee. Redwood engaged both Fitch Ratings and Moody’s Investors Service to rate the deal, but terminated its application with Moody’s “because the sponsor disagreed with Moody’s preliminary assessment of the risks attributable to the mortgage loans, including, without limitation, the risks attributable to the geographic concentration of the mortgage loans,” according to the SEC filing. More than 56% of the loans were originated in California with 8% of them originated in New York, the next highest state. The deal is expected to close March 1. Write to Jon Prior. Follow him on Twitter: @JonAPrior