Mortgage Servicing News articles from March 2005

Mortgage Servicing News archives from March 2005

Some Oppose Servicing Fee Cut.
March 1, 2005... Washington -- Key players in the mortgage industry appear to have differing opinions on whether Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should cut their minimum servicing fee to 12.5 basis points. In early February, the Mortgage Bankers Association held...

Snapshot.
March 1, 2005... Current Min. Fee 25.0 basis points Proposed Min. Fee 12.5 basis points Copyright 2005 SourceMedia, Inc. All Rights Reserved. http://www.sourcemedia.com http://www.mortgageservicingnews.com

FHA Escrow Proposal Worries Lenders.(Federal Housing Administration)
March 1, 2005... Orlando, FL -- When the nation's top mortgage servicing executives gather here starting Feb. 20, many will be eager to talk with Federal Housing Administration officials about some proposals that could pose big challenges for the management of...

Wells is Buyer In MSR Sales.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... Washington -- Ohio Savings Bank FSB, Cleveland, has sold a $5 billion bulk portfolio of servicing rights - reportedly to Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, Des Moines. A few weeks earlier the bank-owned Wells bought a $9 billion package of...

The Nation's Top Five Residential Servicers: a Decade of Explosive Growth.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... (Dollars in Billions) (part 1 of 2) Servicer Res. Serv. Res. Serv. Name Yr-end '04 Yr-end '94 Countrywide $838 $110 Wells Fargo Home $782...

SPS Going to CSFB?(Select Portfolio Servicing Inc.)(Credit Suisse First Boston L.L.C.)
March 1, 2005... Salt Lake City -- The rise of Wall Street firms as the primary owners of subprime mortgage servicers continues, with Credit Suisse First Boston entering into a deal that may lead to its purchase of Select Portfolio Servicing, formerly known as...

Subprime Servicing Outstanding: Phenomenal Growth?
March 1, 2005... (Dollars in Billions) (part 1 of 2) Year All U.S. Subprime Debt Ending Hous. Debt Outstanding Dec. '04 $7,664 $989 Dec. '03 $7,081 $667 Dec. '02 ...

Interim Servicers Under Fire.
March 1, 2005... Washington -- Nonconforming lenders that sell their loans to Wall Street conduits are starting to express concerns about the quality of "interim" servicers. One West Coast-based lender told National Mortgage News that he received a buyback...

Study Sees Growth in Home Equity First Liens.
March 1, 2005... Atlanta -- Serious delinquencies are up, but many home equity lenders are not in a second lien position anymore, according to a recent study. That rising first-lien share could be a blessing from a risk management perspective, but it also...

ACB Members Bullish On Mortgage Prospects.(America Community Bankers)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... Washington -- Executives at small- and medium-size banks and thrifts seem to be upbeat about the mortgage business in 2005, according to a real estate lending survey by America's Community Bankers. Nearly 50% of the respondents expect to...

Ameriquest Is Opening New Servicing Center.
March 1, 2005... Schaumburg, IL -- Ameriquest Mortgage Co. and its wholesale affiliate, Argent Mortgage, have expanded and upgraded their affiliated loan servicing center here with the opening of a new center in an 11-story office tower just north of Chicago....

Moody's Affirms HomEq's Top Rating.
March 1, 2005... New York -- Moody's Investors Service has reaffirmed the servicer quality rating of SQ1, the agency's highest rating, for HomeEq Servicing Corp. Moody's said the rating reflects HomEq's strong collection and loss mitigation abilities,...

Managing Reputation Risk.(Interview)(Interview)
March 1, 2005... Gary Peterson is president of IMAG and the developer of innovative reputation risk solutions. He is an expert in identifying regulatory risk within financial institutions and in designing effective controls and programs to lessen these risks....

Cut the Servicing Fee.
March 1, 2005... Big lenders have been lobbying for a long time to reduce the minimum servicing fee on conforming loans, and we believe the time is right to take that step. Traditionally, the government-sponsored enterprises required a 25 basis point minimum...

The Subprime Boom - Can it Last?
March 1, 2005... A funny thing happened last year in the mortgage market - as total loan originations declined by 28%, the subprime production market continued to chug along like a runaway train. According to figures compiled by this newspaper and its...

Flatter Yield Curve Could Vex Prepay Analytics.
March 1, 2005... After a year notable for defying historical precedent on the prepayment front, the market faces growing uncertainty with the prospect of flattening interest rates, according to a Bear Stearns & Co. review-and-outlook analysis. In the...

BB&T Recaptures $4 Million of Servicing Value.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... Winston-Salem, NC -- BB&T Corp. reported net income of $416.9 million in the fourth quarter, 37% higher than in the fourth quarter of 2003. Earnings per share were $0.75, up from $0.55 a year earlier. The bank said that fourth-quarter...

Lower Financing Spreads Hurt Capstead's 2004 Earnings.
March 1, 2005... Dallas -- Capstead Mortgage Corporation reported net income of $8,149,000, or $0.17 per diluted common share, for the quarter ended Dec. 31, 2004, compared to $13,096,000 or $0.56 per diluted common share, for the same period in 2003. ...

Report Expresses Concern about MI Stocks.(mortgage insurance)
March 1, 2005... New York -- A research report from Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. finds potential downside for mortgage insurance stocks, especially if home prices start to decline. Analysts Jonathan Gray and Adam Weinrich downgraded two mortgage insurers...

SNAPSHOT: share price of mortgage stocks.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... COMPANY TICKER TARGET PRICE Fannie Mae FNM $74 Freddie Mac FRE $72 WaMu WM $40 Countrywide CFC $46 Golden West GDW $77 MGIC ...

WaMu's Killinger Ups Stake in Firm.(Washington Mutual)(Kerry Killinger)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... Seattle -- Washington Mutual chairman and chief executive Kerry Killinger recently purchased 50,000 shares in the company, a transaction that cost him just shy of $2 million. Mr. Killinger bought the shares in mid-November in the open...

Mortgage Insurers See Improved Persistency.
March 1, 2005... NEW YORK -- Record net income for the fourth quarter and year was the earnings story at two of the four publicly traded mortgage insurance companies, with a third reporting only record annual profits. Philadelphia's Radian Group has the...

S&P Sees Few 'High Cost' Mortgage Loans.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... New York -- Through an internal study, Standard & Poor's has evaluated the impact that anti-predatory lending statutes have had on the funding of high-cost loans through the capital markets and found that only 0.01% of the U.S. residential...

Radian in H.K. Deal.(Radian Group Inc)(Standard Chartered Bank )(Hong Kong)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... Hong Kong -- Mortgage insurer Radian Group Inc., Philadelphia, has formed a partnership with Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong) Ltd. here. "Through this partnership, Radian will become the exclusive provider of mortgage insurance for...

Radian's 'Smart Home' Targets Nonprime Market.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... Philadelphia -- Radian Group has completed a structured finance transaction to help the company manage its risk from nonprime mortgage loans. The transaction involved Smart Home Reinsurance 2005-1 Limited, a company that was created and...

Market Capitalization of Publicly-Traded, Mortgage Technology-Related Companies.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... (part 1 of 2) Company Location Electronic Data Systems (EDS) Plano, TX Fidelity Nat'l Financial (FNF) Irvine, CA Fiserv, Inc. (FISV) Brookfield, WI E Trade...

Servicing Turnaround Helps WaMu Beat '04 Expectations.(Washington Mutual)
March 1, 2005... New York -- Washington Mutual exceeded expectations by turning a profit in its mortgage banking business during 2004, in no small part because its mortgage servicing operations performed better than expected. But the company seems eager to...

Hedge Weakness Slows Countrywide's Growth.
March 1, 2005... Calabasas, CA -- Countrywide Financial Corp. had a pretty good year in 2004, but its fourth-quarter results were marred by poor hedging correlation, demonstrating why Countrywide is among the big lenders that would like to shrink the size of...

GMAC Commercial Hits $200 Billion Mark.(GMAC Commercial Mortgage Corp)
March 1, 2005... The latest rankings of commercial mortgage servicers from the Mortgage Bankers Association show the usual suspects at the top. The leading commercial mortgage servicer, by total primary and master servicing volume, as of the end of 2004, is...

CMBS Issuance Edges Up With Momentum from Hotels.(Commercial Mortgage Backed Securities )
March 1, 2005... New York -- Moody's is expecting issuance of U.S. commercial mortgage-backed securities to touch $100 billion for 2005, following issuance of $93 billion for 2004. Tad Philipp, managing director for CMBS, Moody's, said, "U.S. issuance will...

CMSA Launches Political Action Committee.(Commercial Mortgage Securities Association)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... New York -- The Commercial Mortgage Securities Association has formed a federal political action committee to deal with issues impacting the commercial mortgage-backed securities industry on Capitol Hill. Dottie Cunningham, CEO of the CMBS...

BayNorth Creates Fund.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... Boston -- BayNorth Capital, an asset manager for Charlesbank's real estate investments, has closed its BayNorth Realty Fund VI with $430 million. The fund has secured capital from 31 limited partners, including banks and pension funds, and...

Commercial and Multifamily Sector Remains an Industry Hot Spot.
March 1, 2005... San Diego -- Commercial and multifamily mortgage bankers enjoyed a record year in 2004, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported here last week. And most expect the party to continue, as long as worries about the availability of terrorism...

Capital Flows to Apartment Sector.
March 1, 2005... San Diego -- The head of Fannie Mae's multifamily division tried to put a good face on his unit's lackluster 2004 performance at last week's Commercial Real Estate Finance/Multi-Family Housing Conference here. But there was no hiding the...

Budget Dismisses Default Worries on Zero-Down FHA Loans.
March 1, 2005... Washington -- The Bush administration is sticking to its guns and once again it will push for a federally insured zero-downpayment program, despite resistance in Congress and concerns about high default rates and claims. The president's...

Encore Capital Hires Senior Vice President.(Paul Grinberg)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... San Diego -- Encore Capital Group here has hired Paul Grinberg as senior vice president for finance. Mr. Grinberg will be responsible for portfolio purchasing, portfolio sales and portfolio management functions. Encore is an accounts receivable...

Seattle FHLBank's CEO To Step Down in March.(Seattle Federal Home Loan Bank)(Norman Rice retiring as president)
March 1, 2005... Washington -- Norman Rice is retiring as president and chief executive of the Seattle Federal Home Loan Bank and he plans to step down on March 15. The Seattle bank, which is operating under a supervisory agreement, announced Mr. Rice's...

Fannie Taken Off Dow Jones Dividend List.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... New York -- Dow Jones Select Dividend Index is deleting Fannie Mae from the index and replace it with Astoria Financial because Fannie's recent halving of dividends caused the company to fall below the index's yield requirement. To be...

Former Fannie Chiefs to Get Pension Pay.
March 1, 2005... Washington -- The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight has given Fannie Mae the green light to pay initial pension and deferred compensation benefits to its recently ousted chairman/CEO Franklin Raines and chief financial officer...

Freddie Appoints General Counsel.(Joan E. Donoghue joins as senior vice president)(Freddie Mac)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... Washington -- Freddie Mac has appointed Joan E. Donoghue to be senior vice president and general counsel after working at the giant mortgage company for four years. She replaces Ralph Boyd Jr. who was elected chairman of the Freddie Mac...

Street Firms & Their Platforms.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... (Dollars in Millions) Street Servicing Non-Conf. Housing Firm Affiliate Receivables Citigroup CitiFinancial $55,227 Lehman Bros. Aurora Loan (AA) ...

Top Residential Servicers at 12/31/04.
March 1, 2005... (Dollars in Millions) (part 1 of 2) Servicing Volume Rk Organization Name Location 1 Countrywide Financial Corp. Calabasas, CA 2 Wells Fargo Home Mortgage...

Mold Cited as Biggest Environmental Risk among Lenders.
March 1, 2005... San Diego -- A poll conducted by the Enviro-nmental Assurance Group has found that mold is now the No. 1 feared environmental contaminant for real estate lenders and developers. As much as 78% of commercial and multifamily lenders and...

Title Agents Report Growing Sales Pressure.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... Cleveland -- According to a survey by October Research Corp. here, a majority of title insurance agents claim they have been asked or pressured by customers to insure items they would not normally insure. According to the "Independent Title...

Paperless Servicing.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... An increasing number of mortgage lenders and technology vendors are developing plans for a "paperless mortgage." And while we think trees will continue to be sacrificed to support the mortgage industry for years to come, clearly momentum is...

Electronic Payment Provider Adds Capacity.(Fort Knox National Co)
March 1, 2005... Elizabethtown, KY -- Fort Knox National Co., a provider of electronic payment solutions, has opened a new customer contact center in Madisonville, Ky. The new center is being hailed as a major economic development event for western...

Venture Encoding, Ventanex Team Up.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... Fort Worth, TX -- Two Texas-based companies that offer electronic bill payment and presentment options have formed an alliance designed to make electronic payment options easier for loan servicers to use. Venture Encoding provides...

Nexstar Offers New Outsourcing Menu.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... St. Louis -- In many cases, outsourcing mortgage functions tends to be an all-or-nothing affair. But, expanding on its Powered by Nexstar program, Nexstar Financial here has created NexChoice. Banks and financial service institutions have...

Walz Outsourcing Takes Paper Burden Out of Certified Mail.(Walz Group)
March 1, 2005... Temecula, CA -- Walz Group here made a name for itself as a provider of certified mailing services, but now the company is offering to clients the option of outsourcing related functions as well. The impetus for an outsourcing division...

MERS May Reduce Obstacles to E-Notes.(Mortgage Electronic Registration System )
March 1, 2005... Miami -- When Chicago-based 1st Advantage Mortgage LLC set out to do an actual e-mortgage with "the first MERS-regulated commercially reproducible eNote," recalled Paul Lueken, the company's president and owner, the event was delayed because...

Check 21 Clearing Law Prompts New Product.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... Los Angeles -- Dynamic Interface Systems Corp. here and Impact Strategy Group have unveiled a service, ScanOnce, to facilitate check clearing for the Check 21 law. DISC, a supplier of loan servicing software for PCs, and Impact Strategy, a...

Recording Processor Reaps Benefits from Imaging.
March 1, 2005... Saint Paul, MN -- U.S. Recordings, a provider of mortgage recording solutions since 1967, said that its image-based document processing resulted in a substantial decrease in the handling of paper documents last year. During the first two...

LoanPerformance Mines Unstructured Data For Collections.
March 1, 2005... San Francisco -- Increasingly, credit-card lenders are using "unstructured data" to help guide collection and default management decisions, and now the trend is making some inroads in the mortgage arena as well. LoanPerformance here, in...

Harland Forms Technology Alliance with First American.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... Atlanta -- Harland Financial Solutions has formed a technology alliance with The First American Corp. The alliance means that First American's suite of information products and services are now available electronically through Harland's...

Fidelity Enhances Transaction Management Suite.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... Jacksonville, FL -- The Real Estate Solutions division of Fidelity National Financial said it has released a major upgrade to its Transaction Point suite, its Web-based real estate transaction management platform and ordering system. ...

Cendant Completes Planned Spin-Off of Mortgage Subsidiary.
March 1, 2005... New York -- Cendant Corp. here earlier this month spun-off its mortgage and fleet unit to the public, a move that will cost the parent company as much as $650 million after taxes. Late in its first week of trading, shares of the new...

Senator Questions Guarantee Fee.
March 1, 2005... Washington -- Senate Banking Committee chairman Richard Shelby, R-Ala., is looking into complaints from small lenders that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac charge them high loan guarantee fees while offering discounts to large seller/servicers. ...

Servicers Ranked by Number of Loans Serviced at 12/31/04.
March 1, 2005... (part 1 of 2) Rk Organization Name Location 1 Countrywide Financial Corp. Calabasas, CA 2 Washington Mutual Seattle, WA 3 Wells Fargo Home Mortgage San Francisco, CA 4...

Emerging Deal Structures Add CMBS Complexity.(Commercial Mortgage Backed Securities )
March 1, 2005... San Diego -- The evolution of commercial mortgage securitization now enables lenders to split up loans into many parts while pricing them to reflect the risk involved. This is likely to cause some complexity down the road, according to...

New Century Financial's Earnings Edge Up in '04.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... Irvine, CA -- New Century Financial Corp. here reported fourth-quarter 2004 net earnings of $78.7 million, or $1.44 per share, compared with $74.1 million, or $1.80 per share, for the same period in 2003. For the full year, the company had...

Servicing People.(Scott Coburn promoted as vice president at CreditFlex Funding)(Laurel LaBrecque promoted as vice president at Pinnacle Financial Corp.)
March 1, 2005... CALIFORNIA Morgan Hill-Scott Coburn has been promoted to vice president, division manager of CreditFlex Funding. Mr. Coburn was most recently vice president, national sales manager for CreditFlex Funding. He has almost three decades of...

Will Fannie Squeeze Out Technology Providers?
March 1, 2005... Miami -- Many in the industry are concerned about Fannie Mae's plan to bring the Desktop Underwriter decision to the point-of-sale, scrub it for fraud and order the services to fulfill the loan because this initiative cuts several players out...