Mortgage Servicing News articles from May 2009

Mortgage Servicing News archives from May 2009

A Decision Soon on Merrill B/C Servicers.
May 1, 2009... Byline: Paul Muolo Washington-Sometime soon Bank of America will make a final decision on the fate of Merrill Lynch's far-flung mortgage units, which include two large subprime servicing companies and a Jacksonville, Fla.-based division...

Learning from the Past to Avoid New Mistakes.(Credit Counselor)
May 1, 2009... Byline: Amilda Dymi Recently many conversations around me have been about learning from past housing mistakes, figuring out what lessons from the crisis to embrace. One simple word to wrap it all up is "learn." Start early and keep it up...

Franklin American to Keep Servicing.
May 1, 2009... Byline: Bonnie Sinnock Franklin, TN-Times have been tough but Franklin American Mortgage Co. plans to continue to grow by sticking to conservative lending traditions, keeping an eye out for fraud and adapting to advances in regulation and...

NV Is Fraud Ground Zero.
May 1, 2009... Byline: Lew Sichelman Las Vegas-What happens in Vegas doesn't always stay in Vegas, according to the U.S. attorney for the state of Nevada. Contradicting the popular catch line used to promote tourism here, Gregory Brower said that the...

Mortgage Fraud Is Still a Big Growth Business.
May 1, 2009... Byline: Lew Sichelman Las Vegas-There's no question mortgage fraud is a big-ticket item. But it may be bigger than most industry executives believe, speakers at the Mortgage Bankers Association's National Fraud Issues Conference said here....

Canales: Fraud Prosecution in Need of Resources.
May 1, 2009... Byline: Lew Sichelman Las Vegas-A popular lament among those in the lending community who try to report instances of alleged fraud is that the authorities - either state, local or federal - don't seem to care. The cops, on the other...

Index Shows Accelerated Nationwide Value Declines.
May 1, 2009... McLean, VA-Freddie Mac's Conventional Mortgage Home Price Index Purchase-Only Series, which excludes all refinancings, marked the largest annual decrease in its 39-year history in 2008. It showed a 17.9% annualized decline in U.S. house...

Are Loan Modifications a Waste for Servicers?(Mortgage Scene)
May 1, 2009... Byline: Paul Muolo Walking the halls at SourceMedia's recent Mortgage Servicing Conference in Dallas I struck up a conversation with a Realtor from California whose business had been put on hold because his specialty was foreclosure sales....

SERVICING PEOPLE.
May 1, 2009... CALIFORNIA Irvine-RealtyTrac has hired Robert J. Houghton as chief information officer/chief technology officer. Mr. Houghton has more than 25 years of technology experience in operations, management and IT applications across a...

Use Of Auctions Globally.(Managing REO - Creative Ideas Formed to Move Inventory)
May 1, 2009... Byline: Jennifer Harmon New York-Auctioning continues to get more sophisticated on the marketing side of the business. Firms like Williams & Williams still move to target local markets in cities across the country where there are high...

'Wrapping' Up Diverse Real Estate Owned Assets.(Managing REO)
May 1, 2009... Byline: Lew Sichelman New York-Here's an offbeat idea for REO specialists who need to protect their assets: Rather than pay a caretaker a monthly fee to watch over vacated houses and protect them from the elements, not to mention vandals...

Funds Created for Green Affordable Housing.(Managing REO)
May 1, 2009... Byline: Amilda Dymi New York-New leadership at the Department of Housing and Urban Development is energizing support for green affordable housing through pilot programs backed by federal assistance. One beneficiary, New York City's...

Technology for Managing Vacant REO Properties.(Managing REO)
May 1, 2009... Byline: Rich Rollins The REO problem sweeping America is now a full-scale epidemic and cities across the country are looking for ways to hold foreclosing lenders' corporate feet to the fire to take care of the vacant properties they now...

Defaults Flow Into REO Inventory.(Managing REO)
May 1, 2009... Byline: Jennifer Harmon Dallas-Freddie Mac saw 52,000 in real estate-owned inflow in 2008 and about 5,400 properties went through disposition in March. And by the end of 2009, the GSE expects to see 136,000 in REO inflow. REO inventory...

Delinquency Rates Rise for Eighth Straight Quarter.(Managing REO)
May 1, 2009... Chicago-In a recent study for the fourth quarter of 2008, TransUnion.com here said mortgage loan delinquency, a ratio of borrowers 60 or more days past due, increased for the eighth straight quarter, hitting a national average high of 4.58%....

Builders Compete with REO Sales.(Managing REO)
May 1, 2009... Byline: Jennifer Harmon Centennial, CO-Granite Loan Management, a full-service construction risk mitigation company here, is focusing more on workouts and helping banks with workout construction. "A lot of it is portfolios that are...

DETOX Act Is On.(Special Report)
May 1, 2009... Industry talk and most headline news keep debating about how to unclog the marketplace and ensure those so-called toxic mortgage assets are taken care of. Whether the detoxifying process is conducted by the government, private investors or by...

Online Market to Help Release 'Toxic' Assets.(Special Report)
May 1, 2009... Byline: Amilda Dymi New York-Online marketplaces may be one efficient way to detoxify a bank's balance sheet and provide a complementary tool to government efforts to revitalize the securities market. SecondMarket, an online...

Non-Agency MBS Prices Jump But Will Confidence Last?(Special Report)
May 1, 2009... Byline: Bonnie Sinnock New York-Between the government's earlier Public-Private Investment Plan move and the Financial Accounting Standards Board's mark-to-market action, it looked early last month as if the bogged-down private-label...

Challenges in Asset Valuation Fuel Industry Debates.(Special Report)
May 1, 2009... Byline: Amilda Dymi New York-A newly enhanced focus on reporting and processing financial information to ensure transparency that allows data users to get more accurate asset valuations is fueling debates on the best ways to achieve that...

Acquisition Affects RMBS.(Special Report)
May 1, 2009... New York-Following the sale of IndyMac Federal Bank, Fitch Ratings re-evaluated a pool of reverse mortgage assets recently acquired by OneWest Bank. Fitch said Financial Freedom Acquisition LLP residential primary specialty-reverse...

Improving the Odds: Making Workouts Work.(Point of View)
May 1, 2009... Byline: Clayton Baker Mortgage lenders and servicers continue to announce sweeping loan workout and modification programs. Fannie Mae recently unveiled a plan aimed at preventing foreclosures by streamlining the short-sales process. While...

One Bright Spot.(Editorial)
May 1, 2009... It isn't easy for servicers to find bright spots in recent delinquency reports, but we think we've spotted one. It's true that the Mortgage Bankers Association's most recent delinquency numbers at first seem like nothing but more bad news....

TALF Now to Cover Servicing Advances.
May 1, 2009... Washington-The Federal Reserve Board has expanded its new Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF) lending facility to help cash strapped mortgage servicers that pay advances to MBS investors to cover missed payments by delinquent...

Quality Control Programs 'Not Working'.
May 1, 2009... Byline: Brad Finkelstein Deerfield Beach, FL-An expert on operational risk management states that what the government-sponsored enterprises and the Federal Housing Administration require of their approved originators in terms of quality...

Servicers Are Relying on Grassroots Approach.
May 1, 2009... Byline: Amilda Dymi Glendale, CA-Some of the country's largest banks taking a grassroots approach to foreclosure prevention, counseling and loan modification see it as the best way to secure successful workouts. Recently Chase's...

Loss Mit Chief Joins Fannie.
May 1, 2009... Washington-Javid Jaberi, a former senior vice president of servicing in charge of loss mitigation for Residential Capital Corp., has joined Fannie Mae, industry sources told Mortgage Servicing News. Late last week, a Fannie official...

Foreclosures Continue to Boom.
May 1, 2009... Byline: Jennifer Harmon Irvine, CA-Despite the efforts to stem foreclosures by government and many banks, the hopeful signs of slowing in the last quarter of 2008 and January of this year didn't follow through in February, according to top...

DOJ May Start Fraud Task Force.
May 1, 2009... Byline: Paul Muolo Washington-The Department of Justice is moving closer to forming a national mortgage fraud task force to investigate and prosecute real estate and mortgage-related crimes, according to government officials familiar with...

Problems with Loan Mods.(Conference notes)
May 1, 2009... Byline: Paul Muolo and Amilda Dymi Dallas-Servicing industry specialists at the SourceMedia Mortgage Servicing Conference here discussed the latest developments in loan modifications, including problem areas like verification. The excerpt...

Prepay Speeds Are Increasing but Not As Before.(Prepay Watch)
May 1, 2009... Byline: Jennifer Harmon According to TIB Capital Markets in Dallas, prepayments speeds since the beginning of 2009 have increased but still haven't reached levels seen during the last refinance boom during 2003-2004. Reed Bateman, a...

Short Sales a Win-Win Solution?
May 1, 2009... Byline: Amilda Dymi Houston-Industry experts find that while short sales involve some loss and are time consuming, they represent a win-win loss mitigation tool servicers should embrace and streamline rather than avoid. Cheryl Lang,...

Top ALT-A Servicers at Dec. 31, 2008; (Dollars in millions).
May 1, 2009... Alt-A Servicing % Rank Organization Name 12/31/08 12/31/07 change 1 Aurora Loan Services Inc. (1) $79,915 $68,815 16% 2 Wells Fargo & Co. $79,474 $80,806 -2% 3 Bank of America (E) $75,000 $80,000 -6% 4 CitiMortgage Inc....