Mortgage Servicing News articles from May 2007

Mortgage Servicing News archives from May 2007

News Analysis: Foreclosures Rise, and Trend May Persist.
May 1, 2007... New York -- An increasing body of data show that the foreclosure rate is rising, especially among nonconforming loan products, and at least one analysis suggests the upward momentum is far from over. A study by First American CoreLogic...

Wanted: Default Relief.
May 1, 2007... Washington -- Rising subprime foreclosures are forcing lawmakers and regulators to look for ways to help delinquent subprime borrowers avoid foreclosure and they are turning to industry experts and lenders for answers. The Federal Deposit...

New Century Selling MSRs.
May 1, 2007... New York -- New Century Financial Corp. formally unveiled its bankruptcy reorganization plan as Mortgage Servicing News went to press in early April. New Century, based in Irvine, Calif., said the pre-packaged plan involves seling its...

Survey Finds Many 'Clueless'.(homeowners's survey)
May 1, 2007... New York -- A stunning 34% of homeowners polled by Bankrate.com said they don't know whether their loan is a fixed-rate or adjustable-rate product. Intriguingly, of those who claimed they did know what kind of loan they had, 0% claimed to...

Traditional Wall Street Firms And Their Subprime Servicing Affiliates.(Brief article)
May 1, 2007... (Dollars in Millions) Street Servicing Subprime Market B&C Firm Affiliate Receivables Share Serv. Rank Merrill Lynch National City Home Loan $49,545 3.84 % 9 Morgan Stanley Saxon Capital...

Home Equity Delinquencies Increase.
May 1, 2007... Washington -- The weakness in the housing sector that has driven up mortgage delinquencies appears to be spilling over into the home-equity loan sector as well, according to a quarterly consumer delinquency report from the American Bankers...

Countrywide Moving MSRs to Bank Unit.
May 1, 2007... Calabasas, CA -- Countrywide Financial Corp. here is planning to transfer 70% of its mortgage servicing rights into its $92.8 billion federal savings bank by 2011. It is part of a plan to more closely "integrate" Countrywide Home Loans...

Report: Homes Are Less Overvalued after '06 Shakeout.
May 1, 2007... Waltham, MA -- Falling home prices are taking some of the froth out of the nation's hottest housing markets, according to an analysis by Global Insight here. Nationally, the economic and financial forecasting firm says that 16% of the...

Shocks and Lies.
May 1, 2007... Foreclosures are ramping up across the country, but you don't hear much talk about the "four Ds" this time. Downsizing, divorce, death and disease are not the big culprits in the current industry shakeout. Instead, falling home values,...

The SEC has ABS Servicers on their Radar.
May 1, 2007... Charles Denyer is a senior manager with DuPont & Morgan LLP, a national provider for attestation and compliances service for the real estate finance industry. Firmwide services include SAS 70 attestation, Regulation AB compliance, real estate...

The B&C Blame Game: Many Victims, Many Culprits.(mortgage banks)
May 1, 2007... It was roughly a year ago that National Mortgage News broke a story about subprime wholesaler Acoustic Home Loans of California going bust because of something called loan "buybacks." At the time, the general business press didn't pick up the...

Ides of March Portend Higher Prepay Speeds.
May 1, 2007... Some analysts were predicting a significant increase in prepayment rates in March for 30-year mortgages in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage-backed securities. In the Mortgage Strategist, UBS Investment Research analysts forecast that...

Fremont Selling Loans at a Loss.
May 1, 2007... Santa Monica, CA -- Fremont General Corp. here has agreed to sell $4 billion in subprime loans to an unnamed buyer (or buyers) - but will book a $140 million loss on the deal. It is unclear whether servicing rights tied to these loans also...

Thunderhead Streamlines Document Management.
May 1, 2007... Southfield, MI -- Origen Financial, a national provider of manufactured housing loans, has picked the Thunderhead multi-channel enterprise communication platform to automate, streamline and control loan product documentation. A major...

ObjectBuilders Chooses Belanger to Sell eResolve.(R.M. Belanger and Associates)
May 1, 2007... Philadelphia -- ObjectBuilders here expects its eResolve product to offer a significant advance in business-user configurability. eResolve is a Web-enabled repository for data, images, or documents related to a loan file with customizable...

Benedict Unveils Dot-Net Software.
May 1, 2007... Elizabeth City, NC -- Benedict Group Inc. has added a new product to its menu of loan management applications, called "LOANS! For .Net." The servicing, accounting and investor tracking system is designed for commercial, consumer and multifamily...

Rating Agency Downgrades Accredited.
May 1, 2007... New York -- Fitch Ratings has downgraded its rating on Accredited Home Lenders as a residential primary servicer of subprime loans to "RPS3-" from a previous rating of "RPS3+" citing the challenging environment in subprime lending today and...

Other B&C Firms Also Under Review.
May 1, 2007... New York -- In March, Fitch Ratings warned that the effect of the liquidity crisis in the subprime mortgage space could lead to ratings downgrades for B&C mortgage servicers. The rating agency quickly illustrated the point by downgrading two...

Tighter Underwriting Stymies Refinancing of Subprime Loans.
May 1, 2007... Carlsbad, CA -- Tighter underwriting standards will help protect new borrowers from being pushed underwater by exotic forms of adjustable-rate mortgages, panelists agreed here at the Mortgage Bankers Association's Nonprime Mortgage and...

Commercial Realty Loans Buck 'Subprime' Trend.
May 1, 2007... While recent headlines on the residential mortgage side are all about rising defaults, delinquencies and foreclosures (particularly on subprime loans), the story on the commercial mortgage end is altogether different. On the residential...

CRE Debt Outstanding Approaches $3 Trillion.
May 1, 2007... Washington -- Commercial and multifamily mortgage debt outstanding went up to $2.95 trillion at the end of 2006, a 12.7% increase from the end of 2006, the Mortgage Bankers Association reports. The mortgage bankers trade group said, based on an...

Don't Let Hedging Fall Off Your Radar Screen.
May 1, 2007... For about the fifth year in a row, 2007 began with predictions that long-term rates would stabilize and probably edge upward, taking some of the sting out of quarterly revaluations of the mortgage servicing asset. Not so fast. As the first...

Amidst Uncertainty, Some Expect Home Prices to Fall.
May 1, 2007... New York -- Fannie Mae's CEO, Daniel Mudd, knows that housing has been on a roll in recent years, but he thinks the market may be sliding backward this year. Speaking at an investors conference sponsored by Citigroup, Mr. Mudd said that...

Ginnie Mae Contributes to Affordable Housing Growth.
May 1, 2007... Washington -- Marking 13 years of continuous growth, Ginnie Mae said its Multifamily Mortgage-Backed Securities program increased by 7.4% in fiscal year 2006, from $35.3 billion to $37.8 billion. Ginnie Mae president Robert M. Couch...

Impac Forms a New Unit To Manage Problem Credits.
May 1, 2007... Irvine, CA -- Impac Mortgage Holdings here has formed a new subsidiary to acquire, restructure, and remarket nonperforming mortgage loans and real estate property. Impac CEO Joseph Tomkinson said the unit is being created "in anticipation...

Flagstar Recognized by Freddie Mac.(Flagstar Bank)(Brief article)
May 1, 2007... Troy, MI -- Flagstar Bank has achieved Freddie Mac's "Tier One Platinum" loan servicing status, the company said last month. Freddie Mac rates servicers monthly on the basis of performance measures pertinent to both performing and...

National City Wrangles with Mortgage Insurer over Claims.
May 1, 2007... Cleveland -- In a regulatory filing with the SEC, National City Corp. said one of the two mortgage insurance companies covering its home-equity loans has refused to make payments on a significant number of claims. A spokesperson for NCC...

NovaStar Cuts Spare Servicing.
May 1, 2007... Kansas City, MO -- Subprime funder NovaStar Financial recently trimmed its workforce by 17% - 350 positions - citing the changing landscape of the mortgage industry. The nation's 16th largest subprime lender said the layoffs will affect...

ResCap Plummets to Loss in Challenging 4th Quarter.(Financial report)
May 1, 2007... New York -- GMAC Financial Services saw its earnings slip to $2.1 billion last year, down 7% from 2005, and the company blamed weak performance at its residential mortgage business for the decline. Residential Capital, GMAC's real estate...

Clayton Holdings Gets Upgraded.
May 1, 2007... Shelton, CT -- Clayton Holdings, a provider of analytics, consulting and outsourced services for loan servicers, capital market firms, lenders and fixed-income investors, had its corporate debt ratings upgraded by Moody's Investors Service. ...

REOs Popular on the Auction Block: RealtyBid.com attracts a growing variety of buyers bidding for properties.
May 1, 2007... Realtors and banks are gaining more confidence in selling slow moving properties and REO properties on the Internet. According to a report commissioned by the National Auctioneers Association, the most significant growth among all types of...

Predictive Risk Analytics Can Save Lenders in Troubling Times.
May 1, 2007... New York -- In light of increasing defaults and foreclosures, a new Deloitte & Touche USA LLP report recommends mortgage lenders pay special attention to collection operations based on predictive risk analytics technology strategies "which...

AFN Teams Up with Business Institute.
May 1, 2007... St. Louis -- The American Legal & Financial Network, which offers education and professional development to legal and residential mortgage banking professionals, is offering 12 legal training seminars in partnership with the National Business...

Debt Collectors Need to Follow the Rules of Conduct.(Gila Corp.)
May 1, 2007... Austin, TX -- Customer advocate groups are promoting higher public awareness on rules of conduct debt collecting agencies are required to abide to by law. Organizations such as Gila Corp. here said it has engaged two business units,...

Law Firm Joins LOGS Network.
May 1, 2007... Northbrook, IL -- The law firm of Shapiro & Kreisman, serving the states of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Hampshire, has combined its practice into the law firm of Korde & Associates, based in Chelmsford, Mass., the LOGS Network here said...

Williams & Williams Offers Online Real Estate Auctions.
May 1, 2007... Tulsa, OK -- As a means of providing a new auctioning alternative for real estate investors looking at properties in the $30,000 to $50,000 price range, Williams & Williams here, a global real estate auctioning company, has unveiled an online...

New 'Buckets' of Reasons for Borrowers Who Default.(Jeffrey Taylor of Digital Risk)
May 1, 2007... Orlando, FL -- Three main reasons for default have emerged from an effort by a loss mitigation firm headquartered here to help Wall Street get a fix on pools of nonperforming mortgages. The "majority of issues with borrowers fall into three...

National City Haunted by Credit Concerns From the Past.
May 1, 2007... Cleveland -- National City Corp. here has recently been downgraded by several equity analysts in the wake of growing concern about a hangover from its days as parent of First Franklin. While NC has scaled back its involvement in subprime...

Fitch Ups Capital One's Debt Rating.
May 1, 2007... New York -- Fitch Ratings has upgraded the long-term issuer default rating of Capital One Financial Corp., which over the last two years has acquired two big mortgage lenders, to a rating of "A-" from a previous rating of "BBB+." Fitch also...

Philanthropic Entity Will Assist ARM Holders In Distress.(First American Homeownership Foundation)(Adjustable Rate Mortgage )
May 1, 2007... Santa Ana, CA -- Created to assist Americans who did not benefit from the "unprecedented boom in homeownership and home values in recent years," the First American Homeownership Foundation said this year it will focus on the needs of homeowners...

Foreclosure Filings Hit New High in MA.
May 1, 2007... Framingham, Mass. -- ForeclosuresMass.com released its February Massachusetts Market Analysis Report with data revealing that foreclosure filings in Massachusetts continue to escalate at a record-setting pace and reached a new high in January....

Hiring REO Agents: What Asset Management Companies Look For.
May 1, 2007... Dearborn, Mich. -- Finding the right agents to work for REO departments can often be a difficult task, especially as business continues to pick up for many asset managers across the country. New hires must often go through extensive...

Tips on Dealing with Spring Repairs and Preventive Care.
May 1, 2007... Newport Beach, Calif. -- Today's better-built, well-insulated homes can trap excess moisture inside, especially if there is inadequate ventilation. The unwanted moisture shows up as musty odors, rusty stains around light fixtures, damp, sticky...

Despite February Dip Foreclosures Are Rising.
May 1, 2007... Irvine, CA -- RealtyTrac's monthly update on foreclosure activity found that 130,786 borrowers faced default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions in February, down 4% from the January total. (See table, page 26.) But a...

U.S. Foreclosure Market Statistics by State - Feb 2007.
May 1, 2007... 1 for %Change %Change every from from Rate Rank State Name NODs REOs Total #HH Jan 2007 Feb 2006 -- U.S. 29,662 22,114 130,786 884 -3.91 11.64 38 Alabama 3 157 449 4,373 -31.66 461.25 31...

After Bad B&C News, Heads Roll at HSBC.(resignation of Bobby Mehta and Sandy Derickson from HSBC Finance Corp. and HSBC Bank USA N.A. respectively)(Brief article)
May 1, 2007... New York -- HSBC Holdings said Bobby Mehta, CEO of HSBC Finance Corp., Charlotte, N.C., has resigned from the troubled subprime lender. Additionally, the bank said Sandy Derickson, president and CEO of HSBC Bank USA, has departed as well....

Reserve Increase Seen at OOMC.(Option One Mortgage Corp.)(Brief article)
May 1, 2007... Kansas City, MO -- Subprime giant Option One Mortgage Corp. here lost $69.7 million in its fiscal third quarter ending Jan. 31, reflecting a large increase in loan-loss reserves. Option One's parent, H&R Block, was in the process of...

EPDs Affect NovaStar Financial Earnings.
May 1, 2007... Kansas City, MO -- Subprime wholesaler NovaStar Financial Inc. here saw its share price plunge 50% last week after reporting a fourth-quarter loss and raising the possibility that it would "de-REIT." The company - whose 52-week high is $38...

Freddie Limits B&C Exposure.
May 1, 2007... McLean, VA -- Freddie Mac here revealed that nearly one-fifth of its retained portfolio consists of securities backed by subprime mortgages, but since those securities are credit enhanced to a AAA rating, the company believes its credit...

Hazard Insurance.
May 1, 2007... After the tumultuous hurricanes of 2004 and 2005, especially Katrina, lenders got something of a break last year. Despite dire warnings, the hurricane tally was pretty low in 2006. The year, in general, saw fewer property threats from natural...

Assurant Sees Growing Need for 'Voluntary' Property Insurance.
May 1, 2007... Atlanta -- Somewhere between standard homeowners insurance and lender-placed coverage, a new niche of "voluntary" insurance coverage exists and the market is growing, according to Assurant Specialty Property. Assurant is providing the...

Homeowners Go Coastal with Mitigation Opinions.
May 1, 2007... Malvern, PA -- A survey finds that people living in coastal communities are more supportive of issues related to natural disaster preparedness, mitigation and insurance, according to the Insurance Research Council. But when it comes to taxpayer...

Spring Best Time to Get Flood Insurance.
May 1, 2007... New York -- The Insurance Information Institute is cautioning everyone to assess whether they are adequately covered for flood-related losses since warmer weather may trigger flooding, often in areas considered low risk. "There is a 30-day...

Annual Homeowners Insurance Premiums Vary Widely By State.
May 1, 2007... State Premium Rank Alabama $793 11 Alaska $810 10 Arizona $642 29 Arkansas $768 15 California $835...

Insurers Paid $40 Billion in Katrina Storm Claims.
May 1, 2007... Washington -- The Insurance Information Institute disputes claims that homeowner insurers have reneged on policy obligations in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, saying the industry has settled, without dispute, "nearly all" of the 1.7 million...

Homeowners Urged To Assess Flood Risk.(Insurance Information Institute's Jeanne M. Salvatore)(Brief article)
May 1, 2007... Washington -- Warmer temperatures signal the arrival of spring but also contribute to snow melts and the risk of flooding in certain parts of the country. That means there is no better time for consumers to assess whether they are adequately...

EuropeServicing Goes to London in May.(Brief article)(Conference notes)
May 1, 2007... London -- EuropeServicing 2007, a conference designed to bridge the gap between primary and secondary markets, is scheduled to be held here May 15-16. The first day will be devoted to discussion of servicing commercial real estate loans...

B&C Defaults Approach 11%.(Brief article)
May 1, 2007... Washington -- The subprime default rate hit 10.52% in January, up 40 basis points in one month, but researchers at Friedman Billings Ramsey continue to predict that defaults won't breach 11% this year. The default rate on securitized...

MI Executive Sees 'Reverse Migration' of Loans.
May 1, 2007... Atlantic City, NJ -- The current situation in the subprime mortgage business is the "greatest reverse migration" of mortgage loans from the investor back to the originator, the chief executive of Radian Guaranty told the Regional Conference of...

Top Servicing Gainers in 4Q 2006.
May 1, 2007... (Dollars in Millions) Servicing Volume % Market Mkt Shr Rank Organization Name Location 12/31/06 12/31/05 Change Share % pt. +/- 1 Wachovia (1) Charlotte, NC $175,244 $38,745 352% 2.04% +1.57% 2 Paul...

Servicing People.(appointment of Scott Thomsen at Lenders First Choice)(appointment of Ed Krug at String Real Estate Information Services)(promotion of Ed Hunter at Pro-Teck )
May 1, 2007... CALIFORNIA Simi Valley-Lenders First Choice has added Scott Thomsen as national sales director. At Lenders First Choice, Mr. Thomsen is responsible for building and managing relationships with national and regional mortgage lenders...

Freddie Sees Market Transition.
May 1, 2007... Atlantic City, NJ -- Freddie Mac has strong beliefs for the primary mortgage market, namely that it needs to be "strong, dynamic and profitable," a company executive told the Regional Conference of Mortgage Bankers Associations here. Paul...