Mortgage Servicing News articles from April 2004

Mortgage Servicing News archives from April 2004

Will Insurer Sell Mortgage Unit?
April 1, 2004... Will the Principal Financial Group pull the rip cord and decide to unload its mortgage division, the nation's 11th largest residential servicer? For now, the insurance company is neither confirming or denying reports that its mortgage...

FHA Overdues Top B&C.(Federal Housing Administration )
April 1, 2004... The delinquency rate on Federal Housing Administration loans is higher than the subprime mortgage delinquency rate for the first time, according to data collected by the Mortgage Bankers Association. As of Dec. 31, 12.23% of FHA-insured...

Rate Drop Hurts Deals.
April 1, 2004... Investors in mortgage servicing rights - and the investment bankers that broker deals - were anticipating a strong first quarter in which the long ailing "bulk" market would revive. But as Mortgage Servicing News went to press this month,...

India Not in All Plans.
April 1, 2004... Outsourcing call centers and customer service jobs to India is becoming a hot topic - not just for politicians but for mortgage bankers. Recently, the nation's two largest residential servicers - Wells Fargo Home Mortgage and Washington...

Subprime Faces Cost Pressures.
April 1, 2004... Additional regulatory scrutiny and litigation risk inevitably may push up the cost of servicing subprime loans, some of the industry's leading experts said at the MBA National Mortgage Servicing Conference here (for related MBA coverage, see...

Top Subprime Servicers at 12/31/03.(Illustration)
April 1, 2004... (Dollars in Millions) (part 1 of 2) Rank Organization Name, Location 1 Household Financial Services, Prospect Heights, IL (1) (E) 2 CitiFinancial, Baltimore, MD 3 Homecomings, Bloomington, MN 4 ...

Wells Fargo Now Processing 88% of Payments Electronically.
April 1, 2004... Wells Fargo Home Mortgage has received an annual award from an electronic payments trade association in recognition of its adoption of electronic payment processing. NACHA - the Electronic Payments Association - has awarded Wells Fargo its...

26 Servicers Rank as 'Tier One'.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... Twenty-six mortgage servicers have achieved Tier One recognition from Freddie Mac for both superior investor reporting and default management during two or more quarters of last year. Freddie Mac also inducted eight servicers into its Tier...

Snapshot: Freddie's Servicing Tiers.
April 1, 2004... Tier One Lenders in '03: 26 Hall of Fame recipients: 8 Monetary incentives since '96: $20 Million Copyright 2004 Thomson Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. http://www.thomsonmedia.com http://www.mortgageservicingnews.com

ABN Amro Offers Master Servicing.(ABN Amro Capital Markets )(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... ABN Amro Capital Markets here has started offering master servicing in the market and was recently added to Standard & Poor's Select Servicer list. As a master servicer, AMCAP monitors the sellers of mortgage loans who retain the servicing...

Fannie Preparing New Guidelines to Discourage Abuse.
April 1, 2004... Fannie Mae is preparing to issue new servicing guidelines in a few weeks to clarify its policies and make sure its servicers don't engage in abusive practices. The new guidelines will be "closely aligned" with the provisions of the...

Essex Completes LoanCare Spin-Off.(with the merger of Essex into Southern Financial Bancorp)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... The spin-off of LoanCare Servicing Center from Essex Bancorp has been completed along with the merger of Essex into Southern Financial Bancorp. Under terms of the previously announced merger, existing shareholders of Essex own 75.1% of...

Legal Risk a Top Issue.
April 1, 2004... Fairbanks Capital, staggering from months of criticism in the press and a lengthy, expensive federal investigation, has reached a settlement with regulators and may well be on the road to recovery. Though the company's portfolio has been...

HELOC Payoffs: Cover Your Bases.(Home equity line of credit)
April 1, 2004... Mr. Rothenberg is an attorney in the Cleveland office of Weltman, Weinberg & Reis Co. LPA in the foreclosure/evictions department. He can be reached at lrothenbergweltman.com. In a typical scenario, a lender makes a loan that includes an...

Is a 20% Market Share Even Possible in Servicing?
April 1, 2004... A lot's been written in these pages about the aspirations of firms like Wells Fargo, Washington Mutual and Countrywide - the "big three" (so to speak) of the mortgage industry. Somewhere along the line each has professed or hinted that one day...

Mortgage Prepayment Speeds Are Starting to Rise Again.
April 1, 2004... Prepayment rates for Fannie Mae mortgage-backed securities rose broadly in February, as coupons below 6.5% recorded greater-than-expected speed increases. The speed-up prompted the Bear Stearns Prepayment Commentary to caution that the...

FHA Insurance Fund Posts Gain Despite Heavy Losses in '03.
April 1, 2004... The Federal Housing Administration's capital ratio rose to 5.21% in fiscal year 2003 from 4.52% in FY 2002, but capital reserves rose by only $100 million to $22.7 billion, according to the annual actuarial report prepared by Deloitte & Touche....

GMAC Mortgage Wins Two Clients.(Redwood Trust and MortgageIT)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... GMAC Mortgage here has signed two new clients for its fast-growing subservicing business. Redwood Trust and MortgageIT will outsource selected servicing functions to GMAC. Tony Renzi, executive vice president and head of national loan...

New Tools Address CA Lien Problems.(Alliant Information Services)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... Alliant Information Services, a member of the California Mortgage Bankers Association, has developed two new tools to help mortgage bankers and other real estate professionals solve problems caused by property taxes and assessment liens in the...

Correction.(Correction Notice)
April 1, 2004... In the March issue of MSN, the name of Bill Maguire, senior vice president of risk management at GMAC Mortgage, was misspelled. Also, the first mortgage automation platform that GMAC uses was incorrectly identified as Excel. The correct name is...

Top GNMA Servicers at 12/31/03.(Illustration)
April 1, 2004... (Dollars in Millions) (part 1 of 2) Rank GNMA Issuer Location 1 Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. Des Moines, IA 2 Washington Mutual Bank Seattle, WA 3 Chase...

Court Rules Lender Can Force Place Terror Insurance.( Omni Berkshire Corp)
April 1, 2004... A decision has been rendered on a case involving a dispute between a servicer and a borrower about "force placement" of terrorism insurance, with a United States District Court in New York ruling that a servicer is free to "force place"...

Apartment Sector Continues to Stabilize.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... Conditions in the multifamily industry continue to improve, according to the latest survey by the National Multi Housing Council. The multifamily industry trade association reports that all four indices it uses to measure multifamily market...

Survey Finds Support for TRIA.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... A survey of 40 commercial/multifamily mortgage banking firms by the Mortgage Bankers Association finds that all the 29 respondents favor the extension and reauthorization of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act of 2002, the trade group reports. ...

Survey Sample.
April 1, 2004... CRE Lenders: 40 Support TRIA: 29 Combined Portfolio: $115 billion Copyright 2004 Thomson Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. http://www.thomsonmedia.com http://www.mortgageservicingnews.com

Criimi Mae Sees New Opportunities.(company earnings and more)
April 1, 2004... Criimi Mae has seen a turnaround in its financial performance, based on its fourth-quarter 2003 results. And the commercial mortgage investor and servicer is now contemplating the next step forward. For the fourth quarter of 2003, the...

S&P Expects 'Market Performance' from Realty Funds.
April 1, 2004... Standard & Poor's is expecting a "market performance" year from real estate mutual funds in 2004, after the group turned in a 36.6% return for 2003. The financial information services company also expects real estate investment trusts, in...

Freddie Introduces New 'Float-to-Fixed'.(Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp.'s service offers)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... Freddie Mac has introduced a "float-to-fixed-to-float" option for multifamily mortgage lenders. This feature will enable borrowers to get higher cash flows from their properties earlier in the life of a mortgage, by taking advantage of low...

Desert Document Services Promotes SMART Doc Compliance.
April 1, 2004... When lenders start putting together their budgets for next year, a question on many minds will be how much money, if any, to invest in becoming SMART-Doc compliant. DesertDocs has some good news about that. Desert Document Services...

AccuPost Restructures for Growth.(people)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... AccuPost Corp., a provider of post-closing technology and outsource services for mortgage servicers, has restructured in response to its continued growth and customer demand for additional scalability. Last year, AccuPost signed several top...

Releases & Title Services.
April 1, 2004... Think the front end of the mortgage business has been busy lately? Maybe you should talk to people on the back end. Record loan origination activity, most of it in the form of refinancing, has created a record amount of lien release,...

U.S. Recordings Sees Growing Momentum for E-Recording.
April 1, 2004... A company that provides mortgage recording solutions says that lien releases for half of the states in the country are now being prepared with its software, and the company's CEO sees signs that electronic recordation of mortgage documents is...

Capital Title Moves into Appraisals.(Capital Title Group Inc. purchased Nationwide Appraisal Services Corp.)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... Capital Title Group Inc. here is looking to move into the appraisal business as well. It has agreed to purchase Nationwide Appraisal Services Corp., Pittsburgh. Besides being in the appraisal business, Nationwide will help Capital expand...

Lenders Choice Celebrates First Year in Title Business.
April 1, 2004... Lenders First Choice, a title and settlement services company here, recently celebrated its first anniversary of operations. Its president, Bill Moody, met with Mortgage Servicing News in New York to discuss the growth the company has seen...

Executive Says Trailing Documents Bedevil Servicers.
April 1, 2004... After consecutive years of record payoff and loan boarding activity, the difficulty of managing problems associated with "trailing documents" has become abundantly clear, according to Stewart Mortgage Information senior vice president Matt...

Assurant Launches New Brand Identity.(national advertising campaign )(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... Assurant Inc., formerly Fortris Inc., has launched a national advertising campaign to promote its new name and brand identity. The provider of specialized insurance and insurance-related products changed its name in connection with its...

Kroll Factual Buys The Credit Network.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... Kroll Factual Data Inc., the mortgage screening subsidiary of Kroll Inc., New York, has purchased The Credit Network here, a mortgage credit reporting company. The deal is valued at $20.5 million and will be paid in cash. It is expected...

Lenders Favor Pre-Emption.
April 1, 2004... Mortgage servicers have joined other industry voices and are advocating for one set of national rules governing "predatory lending" as the issue continues to spread into their sphere of business. Speaking at the MBA's National Mortgage...

Gains Exceed Mortgage Cost for Many.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... Ever fantasized about living someplace rent-free? Or better yet, getting paid to own a home? And if you're a lender, did you ever imagine you might be giving away free mortgage money? It may be you already are, according to Freddie Mac...

Kent Mattingly and Alberta Hultman.
April 1, 2004... Kent Mattingly, director of client relations at Pierce and Associaties, Humble, Texas, spoke with Alberta Hultman, executive director of USFN, America's Mortgage Banking Attorneys, during the MBA National Mortgage Servicing Conference in San...

Klein: Don't Rush To Cut MSR Fees.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... The Federal Housing Administration's monitoring of its direct endorsement lenders is failing to detect substantial underwriting deficiencies or mortgage fraud that could damage loan performance, according to a report by the Office of Inspector...

Another Year of Churning? Blame Big Productivity Gains.
April 1, 2004... This was supposed to be the year that interest rates started a gradual rise, slowing the three-year-old refinancing mania and giving servicers a reprieve from portfolio churning and weak prices for servicing rights. But then again, that's...

Greenspan Faults GSEs.
April 1, 2004... Proving once again that he's no friend of the GSEs, Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan last week implored Congress to curb their growth and even privatize them. But most members of the Senate Banking Committee weren't buying,...

GSE's Take 70% of Loans.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which last week were criticized by the nation's central banker as being too big to fail, bought seven out of every 10 conventional loans originated last year, according to figures compiled by National Mortgage News,...

Lessons from the Fairbanks Case.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... Officials from the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Federal Trade Commission were quick to say that they are not trolling for potential investigation targets at the MBA National Mortgage Servicing Conference here last week....

Fairbanks Removed from Watch Status.
April 1, 2004... Fitch Ratings has removed Fairbanks Capital Corp.'s servicer ratings from "rating watch negative" status, where they were placed last October following widely publicized accusations of improper loan servicing and collection practices. And...

People.
April 1, 2004... CALIFORNIA Brea-ResMAE Financial Corp. said that Robert E. Dean and Richard A. Mirro have been elected as independent members to its board of directors. Mr. Dean most recently was a senior managing director of Ernst & Young Corporate...

IRS Doubles Fraud Effort.
April 1, 2004... Guess who's going after the property flippers and crooked mortgage brokers? None other than the Internal Revenue Service. The number of real estate fraud investigations conducted by the IRS criminal unit has doubled in the past two...

Regulator Scrutinizes Fannie Accounting.
April 1, 2004... The chief regulator of Fannie Mae said the mortgage giant uses more than 70 flawed accounting systems in its financial reporting division, a unit that was responsible for a $1.1 billion accounting mistake back in October. In a Feb. 24...

FHA Will Do Hybrid ARMs.(Federal Housing Administration )(Adjustable Rate Mortgage )(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... The Department of Housing and Urban Development has issued a final rule that will allow Federal Housing Administration lenders to offer hybrid adjustable-rate mortgages for the first time. Under the final rule, the FHA can insure loans with...