Mortgage Servicing News articles from April 2007

Mortgage Servicing News archives from April 2007

Citi Eyes Argent Deal.
April 1, 2007... NEW YORK -- Citigroup has inked a deal that gives it an "option" to buy subprime wholesale giant Argent Mortgage, Orange, Calif., and the $65 billion servicing platform of its sister company, Ameriquest Mortgage. If Citigroup winds up...

A Scorecard of Ailing & Dead Subprime Servicers.(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... (Dollars in Millions) Servicer B&C The Name Serv. Situation Option One $69,039 Hurt by buybacks, parent trying to sell it Ameriquest/Argent $65,000 Losing money, may...

Profit Run Might Stall.(Operational Profit Per Loan)
April 1, 2007... WASHINGTON -- While the financial performance of servicing rights has been volatile in recent years, the industry's operational profits have continued to rise steadily, according to an analysis by the Mortgage Bankers Association. In fact,...

News Analysis: B&C Woes Spreading.(bankruptcy protection)
April 1, 2007... WASHINGTON -- The meltdown in the subprime sector is casting a gray cloud over the A- to D servicing market. As Mortgage Servicing News went to press last month, the sector's liquidity crisis - and related woes - was endangering the stability...

Subprime Defaults Soar in 2006.(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... WASHINGTON -- The troubled subprime industry continues to be plagued by early defaults on adjustable-rate subprime loans originated in 2006, although the default rate on all subprime loans leveled off at 10.12% in December. The default...

Top Residential Servicers at December 31, 2006.
April 1, 2007... (Dollars in Millions) Servicing Volume % Mkt. Shr. Rnk Organization Name Location 12/31/06 12/31/05 Change % pt. +/- 1 Wells Fargo Home San Francisco,CA $1,341,870 $1,005,410 33% Mortgage 2...

Forecasting Is a Science.
April 1, 2007... NEW YORK -- For loss forecasting on subprime mortgages, some organizations rely too heavily on models, while others only rely on its management's intuition. The best loss forecasting comes from some sort of combination of the two, said a...

Experts See No Letup in Foreclosure Trend: 'This may be a time when you want to start putting some human intervention into that process.'.
April 1, 2007... SAN DIEGO -- Executives at RealtyTrac expect foreclosure filings to increase another 20% to 25% this year, on top of a 42% rise in filings posted in 2006 compared with 2005. "We think that's a pretty conservative estimate," RealtyTrac vice...

Analytics Provider Sees Jump in Earnings.(Clayton Holdings)(Statistical data)
April 1, 2007... SHELTON, CT -- Clayton Holdings, a provider of analytics, consulting and outsourced services for capital market firms, lenders, loan servicers and investors, said net income totaled $7.9 million on record revenue of $239.2 million for the full...

36 Execs Receive Servicer Degrees.(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... SAN DIEGO -- A group of 36 Mortgage Bankers Association graduates of the Certified Mortgage Servicer designation conducted by CampusMBA received their certificates at the MBA's 2007 Mortgage Servicing Conference here. This group of graduates...

Editorial: Headline Risk.(risk posed by media coverage of mortgage banks loan recovery efforts)(Editorial)
April 1, 2007... If there was an overarching theme at this year's MBA Mortgage Servicing Conference it was the fear of "headline risk." Nobody needs to be reminded how dangerous bad news about aggressive collections and foreclosure practices can be. Just...

Point of View: The Snoozeth-Looseth Doctrine: "The buyer of the loan may be at risk of losing its mortgage in the event of a transfer of title.".
April 1, 2007... When a mortgage loan is purchased, an assignment of the mortgage and the underlying note generally must be executed and filed for record in the public records. This requirement is intended to provide others with the ability to know to whom...

What Came First - Crazy Loans or High Prices?
April 1, 2007... Remember when the accounting shenanigans of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were plastered across the front pages of our sister publications National Mortgage News and American Banker? Remember when the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal...

Allregs Offers Legal Content from Law Firm: The Legal Content Support Service includes federal laws and regulations.
April 1, 2007... EAGAN, MN -- AllRegs, an online publisher of reference information for the residential mortgage lending industry, said it will offer legal content support services through Lanahan & Reilly, a mortgage banking law firm. "The regulatory...

Prepay Rate Slowing Down.
April 1, 2007... NEW YORK -- Prepayment rates for 30-year mortgages in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage-backed securities fell about 12% in February in response to a 10 basis point rise in mortgage rates, slower seasonal housing activity and fewer business...

Home Price Growth Slips to Six-Year Low.
April 1, 2007... MCLEAN, VA -- Home prices rose 6.1% last year, the lowest rate of annual price appreciation since 1999, according to Freddie Mac's conventional home price index. That was less than half the national home value appreciation rate posted in...

Regions Is Platinum In Freddie's View.(Regions Mortgage)(Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp.)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... BIRMINGHAM, AL -- Regions Mortgage, a division of Regions Bank, has achieved Freddie Mac's 2006 Tier One Platinum performance ranking for excellence in investor reporting and default management. Freddie Mac said Regions Mortgage was one of...

IndyMac's New Strategy Puts Emphasis on Servicing.
April 1, 2007... PASADENA, CA -- The chairman and chief executive of IndyMac Bancorp Inc. here, Michael W. Perry, sent a letter to stockholders which says the company will de-emphasize growth in its whole loan and mortgage-backed securities investment...

CapitalSouth Buys FL Banking Firm.
April 1, 2007... BIRMINGHAM, AL -- CapitalSouth Bancorp is acquiring privately held Monticello Bancshares Inc. and its subsidiary, Monticello Bank, Jacksonville, Fla. Monticello has a wholesale mortgage production operation headquartered in Fitzgerald,...

Mortgage REITs Suffer in Tough Times.
April 1, 2007... NEW YORK -- A pair of mortgage real estate investment trusts reported losses for the fourth quarter, continuing the trend of a number of firms which have adopted this structure, especially those who specialize in nonprime originations. The...

HomeBanc Dropped To 'Underperform'.(HomeBanc Federal Savings Bank)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... ALEXANDRIA, VA -- Analysts at Friedman Billings Ramsey have downgraded HomeBanc Corp.'s stock to "underperform," saying that the company continues to lose money and that a sale in today's environment "is unlikely." The company has also...

Looming Expiration of TRIEA Raises Concerns.
April 1, 2007... Following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, in which hijackers destroyed prime office space in the World Trade Center in New York, putting other high-profile properties on an at-risk list, the availability of insurance for commercial real estate...

Midland Eyes Opportunities to Service Construction Loans.(Midland Loan Services)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... OVERLAND PARK, KS -- Midland Loan Services is providing additional servicing capabilities on the commercial construction loan front. A team led by Carleen Petronio, senior vice president, will provide these services, Midland reports. The...

Wachovia Tops CRE Servicers.
April 1, 2007... SAN DIEGO -- Wachovia Securities is the largest servicer of commercial and multifamily mortgages, based on volume at the end of 2006, with a $306.6 billion portfolio in primary and master servcing. Other top commercial/multifamily mortgage...

Servicing Hedge Proves Costly for PHH.
April 1, 2007... PHH Corp., Mount Laurel, N.J., has been the subject of some unwelcome headlines recently because of accounting issues that have dogged the company. But sometimes lost amid the big picture of PHH's accounting review is the role that...

Countrywide Offers Referral POWER.(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... CALABASAS, CA -- Countrywide Subservicing has added a new program, known by the acronym POWER, designed to increase income for its subservicing clients by providing them with loan referral information. The "Providing Opportunities With...

Not Everyone Is Swearing Off Subprime Market.
April 1, 2007... WASHINGTON -- While much of the mortgage industry has been backing away from the troubled subprime credit sector, Fannie Mae executives said in a recent conference call with investors and analysts that they anticipate opportunities to grow that...

C-BASS to Buy Nonprime Lender.
April 1, 2007... NEW YORK -- Credit-Based Asset Servicing and Securitization LLC - which is controlled by two mortgage insurance giants - has agreed to pay $260 million for Fieldstone Investment Corp., Columbia, Md., a publicly traded nonprime lender. The...

The Experts Talk: From The REO Trenches: Speaking of Fraud and Defaults... Damien Weldon, director of collateral risk analytics at LoanPerformance; Cary Burch, chairman and CEO of LSSI; Chris Saitta, president of REOTrans; and Allan Martin, CEO of Mortgage Contracting Services, were joined by SourceMedia editors Mark Fogarty, Ted Cornwell, Jennifer Harmon and Amilda Dymi during the roundtable discussion.(Discussion)
April 1, 2007... The panel at the MBA National Mortgage Servicing Conference discussed the state of the mortgage industry and what it means for the REO component of the business. Additional coverage of the discussion can be found in Broker Magazine and the...

Industry Loses $1 Bln to Fraud.
April 1, 2007... WASHINGTON -- The residential lending industry lost nearly $1 billion due to mortgage fraud last year, according to new figures compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FBI said fraud-related losses totaled $993 million in...

eAppraisIT Sees Need for REO Valuation Experts.
April 1, 2007... SAN DIEGO -- Appraisal management company eAppraiseIT sees loan servicing as a growing client market in today's financial environment. In part, that's because appraisal management companies as an industry have a relatively small market...

Stocks Slide on Default Worries: That strategy of bailing out of debt problems by tapping into home equity will suffer now that home prices are not rising as quickly.
April 1, 2007... SACRAMENTO, CA -- Even before New Century went on the skids, the stocks of many publicly traded nonprime lenders were falling fast. An Internet company that focuses on selling foreclosed homes says that all the attention currently being...

Q: Are you outsourcing more REO properties to subcontractors?
April 1, 2007... Participate in our online survey. Click on the website of our sister publication, (www.managingreo.com) to participate. Results from previous respondents break down as follows: Yes 45% No 37.5% Uncertain 17.5% (c) 2007...

Suit Challenges Enforcement of Option ARM Contracts: 'This is the industrywide perspective and everyone is in agreement about the state of the market.'.
April 1, 2007... MILWAUKEE -- A federal judge in Wisconsin recently ordered Chevy Chase Bank to rescind a loan made to a couple who took out an adjustable-rate mortgage because the bank failed to clearly explain how the loan would work. The case was...

Prices Drop in Four States.(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... WASHINGTON -- Data from the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight show that house prices dropped in California, Nebraska, North Dakota and Nevada during the fourth quarter of last year. Michigan, which had seen a price drop in the...

MERS Passes Florida Test.(Mortgage electronic registery system)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... MCLEAN, VA -- The Second District Court of Appeals of Florida, in Tampa, has ruled that MERS has the right to be a party in a foreclosure action. MERS said the victory affirms the legal premise upon which the electronic registry for tracking...

MCS Sees Growing Demand.(Mortgage Contracting Services)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... Mortgage Contracting Services, based in Tampa, Fla., added 63 full-time positions to its staff last year amid rising demand for property preservation and inspection services. Amid widespread reports of rising foreclosure rates, the growth...

Top Subprime Servicers at 12/31/06.
April 1, 2007... (Dollars in Millions) Total Servicing Vol. Percent Market Rank Organization Name Location 12/31/06 12/31/05 Change Share 1 Countrywide Financial Corp. Calabasas, CA...

No Slowdown in Southwest Foreclosures.
April 1, 2007... Don't expect foreclosure filings in the Southwest to slow anytime soon. Just one month into the first quarter of 2007, already 50,404 foreclosure filings have been reported, more than half the 94,631 filings for the region in the entire first...

Deal Is Called Largest Debt Sale.(Great Seneca Financial Corp.)( Asta Funding)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... BETHESDA, MD -- Great Seneca Financial Corp., a debt purchasing firm that acquires portfolios from financial institutions, retail card issuers and national debt buyers, has reached an agreement to sell a debt portfolio with an aggregate face...

Northwest largely Bucks National Foreclosure Trend.
April 1, 2007... As the national market sees a year-over-year upswing in foreclosures, the Northwest remains relatively low next to the rest of the country, even with pockets of increasing inventory. In the Northwest, Wyoming reported the lowest amount of...

Hyland Seeks Servicing Benefit from Post-Closing Automation: 'It translates into doing more loans more quickly with fewer people.'.
April 1, 2007... CLEVELAND -- Hyland Software does a lot more than just help lenders scan documents into computers, company executives told MSN last week. Today, Hyland puts its focus on enterprise content management. And the company's key product, the...

Wolters Kluwer Financial Buys Desert Document Services: 'We're always evaluating build vs. buy scenarios.'.
April 1, 2007... MINNEAPOLIS -- In a move to increase its play in both the document preparation and wholesale lending space, Wolters Kluwer Financial Services has acquired Desert Document Services Inc. Desert Docs is primarily focused on serving the...

Doc Firm Says Automation Can Help Reduce Buybacks.
April 1, 2007... With buybacks on the rise, lenders are actively looking for new strategies to mitigate their risk. Automated data management may be the answer. "I like to stress data management," said Ruth Thompson, CEO at Desert Document Services, a part...

Rating Agency: CDO Servicers Face Challenging Times.
April 1, 2007... NEW YORK -- Rating agency Standard & Poor's says that the growth of collateralized debt obligation issuance poses challenges for the servicers of real estate loans that are pooled into these deals. S&P said the "inherent complexities" of...

Servicing People.(Arbor Realty Trust Inc. appointed James D. Malone )(BSI Financial Services Inc. appointed Alan Paylor )(SCME Mortgage Bankers Inc. appointed Bob Bothereau )
April 1, 2007... CALIFORNIA San Diego-SCME Mortgage Bankers Inc. has hired Bob Bothereau as senior vice president of risk management. In addition to the evaluation and management of credit, product and market risk, Mr. Bothereau will have direct...