Mortgage Servicing News articles from October 2005

Mortgage Servicing News archives from October 2005

Forbearance Key to Katrina Relief.(Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp.)(Federal National Mortgage Association)
October 1, 2005... Washington -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, along with mortgage insurers and servicers, are providing mortgage relief for borrowers facing hardships related to the massive and widespread damage caused by Hurricane Katrina. "What matters most...

Top Subprime Servicers at 6/30/05.(mortgage banks)
October 1, 2005... (Dollars in Millions) (part 1 of 2) Rk Organization Name Location 1 Countrywide Financial Corp. Calabasas, CA 2 Ameriquest Mortgage Corp. (E) Orange, CA 3 Option One Mortgage Corp. ...

Chase Has Been Buying B&C Bulk Deals.(Chase Home Finance)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... Iselin, NJ -- Chase Home Finance here has been a buyer of subprime "bulk" servicing packages but has been avoiding - for the most part - "A" paper bulk acquisitions, said company co-chief executive Tom Wind. In an interview with Mortgage...

NovaStar Stems Losses with Job Training.
October 1, 2005... Kansas City, MO -- NovaStar Mortgage has taken a unique approach to loss mitigation that is designed to help keep more troubled borrowers in their homes. The Kansas City-based subprime lender recently completed a pilot of LaunchPoint, a...

Fidelity Buys DOCX Services.(Fidelity National Financial Inc. acquires DOCX LLC)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... Jacksonville, FL -- Fidelity National Financial here has acquired DOCX LLC, a provider of mortgage lien release solutions, assignment services, county recording office requirements and fee calculators to the mortgage banking industry. ...

GMAC to Service Option ARMs for NetBank.(GMAC Mortgage Corp.)(adjustable rate mortgages)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... Horsham, PA -- GMAC Mortgage has reached an agreement to service option-ARM mortgage loans on behalf of NetBank's pending sale of the loans into the secondary market. NetBank's option-ARM product provides borrowers with the flexibility of...

Groups Analyze Bankruptcy Law.
October 1, 2005... Saint Louis -- A St. Louis-based not-for-profit mortgage legal aide firm and a Columbia, S.C.-based firm specializing in the education of Chapter 13 bankruptcy matters have decided to work together to offer a review on the effects of the...

AFN Adds Members To Attorney Network.(American Legal and Financial Network)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... St. Louis -- The American Legal & Financial Network has added 13 attorney-trustee members and eight associate members to its network. The new attorney-trustee members are Gerner & Kearns Co. servicing Kentucky and Ohio; Shapiro & Burson,...

Roundup: Ratings Upgraded for Three Mortgage Firms.
October 1, 2005... New York -- National City Home Loan Services, GreenPoint Mortgage Funding and Puerto Rico-based Equity One have also recently seen their servicer ratings upgraded by a rating agency. Moody's Investors Service upgraded National City Home...

GreenPoint also Upgraded.
October 1, 2005... New York -- Fitch Ratings upgraded GreenPoint Mortgage Funding's residential primary servicer ratings for alt-A and home-equity products to "RPS2" from "RPS2-minus. Fitch said the primary servicer ratings are based on GreenPoint's...

Equity One's Rating Raised.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... San Juan -- Equity One here has received a "strong" ranking as a residential subprime mortgage loan servicer from Standard & Poor's Rating Services. Previously, Equity One was ranked "above average." Bill Williams, president of parent...

Regions Rating Transferred.
October 1, 2005... New York -- Moody's Investors Service has assigned Regions Bank, which offers residential mortgage servicing through its Regions Mortgage division, an "SQ2" rating as a primary servicer of prime/alt-A residential mortgage loans and an "SQ2"...

IO Extravaganza.(interest-only loans)
October 1, 2005... We've had warnings about a real estate slowdown, most recently from outgoing Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan. But what mortgage servicers really should focus on is one corollary to rising home prices in high-cost markets: the...

Watch Those Servicing Assets.(home equity loans)
October 1, 2005... Lenders are reacting to a changing marketplace. Experienced players see a familiar shifting cycle, increasing home-equity or subprime lending to compensate for flagging refinance business. As this trend continues, it poses new risks for...

When It Comes to Servicing, Go Cheap.(Astoria Federal Savings and Loan Association)
October 1, 2005... Is anyone really surprised that Astoria Federal finally pulled the ripcord and decided to exit the business of servicing residential loans? Probably not. In fact, we may very well see many other Astoria Federal-like shops decide to outsource...

Prepayment Rates Hold Steady in August.
October 1, 2005... Agency MBS speeds held steady for 5.0% and 5.5% coupons but rose as much as 12% for higher coupons in August, strength largely attributable to the number of business days, according to Bear Stearns & Co. Bear Stearns analyst Dale Westhoff...

Homeowners Are Most Likely To Be Subprime in Southwest.
October 1, 2005... Washington -- A new analysis of 2004 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data discovered that borrowers in the Southwest are nearly three times more likely to receive a subprime loan than a borrower on the West Coast. The HMDA analysis by the...

ARM Prepayments Rise; Delinquency Picture Is Mixed.(adjustable-rate residential mortgage-backed securities)
October 1, 2005... Arlington, VA -- Prepayments of subprime fixed-rate and adjustable-rate residential mortgage-backed securities increased slightly in July from the prior month, according to a Friedman Billings Ramsey report. Furthermore, Friedman Billings...

Creditors' Lawyers Team Up in Florida.(Echevarria & Associates P.A.)(Codilis and Stawiarski )(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... Tampa -- Echevarria & Associates has reached an agreement that Codilis and Stawiarski will join forces and form the Florida Default Law Group. Echevarria & Associates, in announcing the agreement, said that the combination of these two...

Report: Hard Road Ahead for Banks.(Citigroup Inc. and BankAmerica Corp.)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... New York -- Analysts at Merrill Lynch have reduced their ratings on the stock of Citigroup and Bank of America from "buy" to "neutral." With regard to Citigroup, Merrill Lynch said in a report that the stock offers value "but has few...

Freddie Mac Gains Market Share, But Earnings Slip.
October 1, 2005... Washington -- Freddie Mac, which is almost current on its earnings releases, reported that first-half 2005 profits tumbled by 60% as net interest income fell and it took a massive loss on its derivatives positions. The company, however,...

Portfolio Growth Slows at Freddie.(Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp.)(Federal National Mortgage Association)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... McLean, VA -- Freddie Mac's mortgage purchase activity declined by 12.6% in July compared to the prior month and the growth of its retained portfolio slowed to an annual rate of 1.9%. The secondary market agency's monthly volume report...

Freddie Benefits from Rate Risk Success.(Federal National Mortgage Association)(Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp.)
October 1, 2005... As government officials prepare to revamp oversight of the government-sponsored enterprises, their big worry is that with huge mortgage portfolios on their balance sheets, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could be vulnerable to a shock from...

Ninefold Jump in Commercial IOs.(interest-only loans)(Moody's Investor Service)
October 1, 2005... New York -- Interest-only loans have jumped to about 66% of all commercial mortgage-backed securities loans rated by Moody's Investors Service in the second quarter, up from their 56% share during the first quarter and 7% share for the first...

Appreciation Strongest in Decades, But Some Markets are Left Out.
October 1, 2005... Washington -- Just when experts were predicting that home price appreciation would slow down, a government report shows that prices rose at the fastest rate in nearly three decades during the second quarter of 2005, but that doesn't mean home...

Strong Price Growth Leaves Some Expecting a Cool Down.(Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp.)
October 1, 2005... Washington -- Freddie Mac expects to see price declines in some hot housing markets, according to the company's president and chief executive Richard Syron. "Along with many other informed observers, we do anticipate some cooling in the...

Lower Downpayments May Augur Higher Default Rate.
October 1, 2005... New York -- A study released by SMR Research revealed that 38% of people who purchased homes in the first six months of 2005 put less than 5% down on the purchase price. According to the report, researchers stated rising home prices combined...

Southern Calif., Northeast Top List Of Riskiest Markets.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... New York -- Four California markets - San Diego, San Jose, Santa Ana and Oakland - have joined Long Island, N.Y., and Boston, making the nation's short list of housing markets with the highest risk of price declines. According to the most...

GMAC Commercial Still Largest CRE Servicer.(GMAC Commercial Holding Corp.)
October 1, 2005... A midyear ranking of top commercial mortgage servicers by the Mortgage Bankers Association shows GMAC Commercial Holding continuing to head up the list, with a total servicing portfolio of $219.71 billion. No. 2 on the list - which takes...

Commercial Servicers Respond to Katrina.
October 1, 2005... New York -- A number of commercial servicers with properties in the areas impacted by Hurricane Katrina are in the process of assessing the challenges they face, according to Standard & Poor's. The rating agency reports that a number of...

ISO Acquires Electronic Insurance Notification Service.
October 1, 2005... Jersey City, NJ -- ISO here has acquired eLIENS, a unit of Xtria LLC. eLIENS provides lien holder and mortgagee notification services for insurance carriers. Xtria is an information technology and services company. Terms of the agreement were...

Tool Counters Loan Fraud.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... Garden Grove, CA -- Informative Research, a mortgage credit reporting agency, has released a new service to combat loan fraud through credit verification. The Credit Score Validator provides mortgage lenders with a tool to authenticate...

Fitch Ratings Affirms Litton's Loan Servicer Ratings.(Litton Loan Servicing Inc.)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... New York -- Fitch Ratings has once again given its top ratings to Litton Loan Servicing, a subsidiary of C-BASS, for the servicing of subprime and high loan-to-value ratio loans. Litton also received the top rating, "RSS1," as a special...

C-Bass Completes $400 Million Deal.(Credit-Based Asset Servicing and Securitization L.L.C.)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... New York -- C-BASS, a specialist in servicing and securitizing credit-sensitive residential mortgages, has closed a REMIC transaction backed by $431 million of residential mortgage collateral. The REMIC deal, which closed Aug. 30, resulted...

S&P to Change HELOC Analysis.(Home Equity Line Of Credit )(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... New York -- Rating agency Standard & Poor's has revised its loss coverage and cash flow criteria used in the analysis of securities backed by home-equity lines of credit. The new methodology, which became effective Aug. 1, applies to...

Job fair: Recruiting & Training the Mortgage Professional.
October 1, 2005... Nearly half a million people work in the real estate finance field, and a good many of them are responsible for some aspect of loan administration. Customer service, escrow analysis, investor reporting, portfolio hedging, default management,...

New Servicing Major Popular with CampusMBA Students.(Mortgage Bankers Association )
October 1, 2005... Washington -- Since announcing its new loan servicing certification program last February, the Mortgage Bankers Association has seen increasing enrollment in the program and expects to see more growth as additional courses are developed. ...

GWU Draws On MBA's Expertise.(George Washington University)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... Washington -- CampusMBA, the educational arm of the Mortgage Bankers Association, has formed a partnership with The George Washington University (GWU) Center for Real Estate and Urban Studies to offer the Executive Institute, an executive-level...

Katrina Sparks Training For Field Service Work.(Safeguard Properties)(real estate management firms)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... Brooklyn Heights, OH -- Hurricane Katrina and the ensuing floods in Louisiana have sparked the nation's largest privately held field services firm to educate field service vendors about issues raised by the storm. Safeguard Properties here...

CampusMBA Launches New Web-Based Instruction.(Mortgage Bankers Association)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... Washington -- CampusMBA, the educational arm of the Mortgage Bankers Association, has unveiled a series of online courses that come with a professor. Rather than relying totally on automated instruction, with programs that perform like an...

Survey Finds Labor Market Still Difficult.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... Menlo Park, CA -- Robert Half International and Careerbuilder.com have released a new study on labor and compensation trends finding that many job seekers believe the market is more difficult today than it was a year ago. Just under half of...

Industry Employment Continues to Grow.(mortgage banks)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... The mortgage companies continued to add new full-time employees to their payrolls in July, bringing the total of new hires over the past 12 months to 45,100. Lenders hired 4,800 new employees in July, according the August employment report...

Servicing People.(appointments)
October 1, 2005... CALIFORNIA Aliso Viejo-GoApply Inc. has appointed Mark Cramer as senior vice president of corporate development. He brings over 12 years of business development and project management experience to the organization. Mr. Cramer will be...