Industry experts digging through thousands of pages of legal documents associated with the $25 billion foreclosure settlement agreed to by five major servicers mostly found what they expected: a complex package of mixed forms of borrower support that the banks are expected to implement sooner rather than later. The settlements involving Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Ally Financial and 49 state attorneys general will have to be approved by the U.S. District Court in Washington, DC. Although critics found grounds for complaint about the varying incentives for loan modification and...

Dividend payments paid by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to the U.S. Treasury for its continued financial support held down the two government-sponsored enterprises during the fourth quarter as Freddie would have otherwise posted a profit, while Fannie narrowed its losses during the final three months of 2011. Freddie actually reported $619 million in net income during the fourth quarter of 2011, compared to the third quarter’s net loss of $4.4 billion, before having to repay $1.7 billion in preferred stock dividends to the government. Under the terms of the GSEs’ purchase agreement, the Treasury is entitled...

Two White House administrations and Congress have separately tried to launch three FHA programs designed to help various constituencies of distressed homeowners since the housing market began to crash in 2007, and none of them have accomplished much. Still, policymakers keep trying. The Obama administration this week announced a handful of changes to the FHA Short Refinance program in hopes of increasing volume. The program, aimed at borrowers who are current on underwater conventional loans, is also being extended through December 2014. According to the most recent FHA data available, only 2,163...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives will take home significantly less compensation during 2012, even as staffers at the taxpayer-subsidized companies will be monetarily rewarded for hitting performance goals – though they won’t be called bonuses – under a new plan unveiled late last week by the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The FHFA’s 2012 executive compensation program reduces top executive pay at the government-sponsored enterprises by nearly 75 percent from pre-conservatorship levels, while it totally eliminates bonuses and establishes a “six-figure” pay target for the executive positions...

Mortgage lenders appeared to have no problem taking up the slack after Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac high-cost loan limits were lowered in the fourth quarter of 2011. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae financed 36.6 percent of the loans exceeding $417,000 that were originated in the fourth quarter of last year, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis. That was down from a 42.7 percent agency share of the jumbo market in the previous quarter. The key factor was the reduction in the top Fannie/Freddie loan limit from $729,750 to $625,500, which (Includes two data charts)...

The Obama administration has released its February Housing Scorecard, and news regarding the housing overhang is largely positive. Existing home sales have continued their upward climb, reaching the highest they’ve been since May 2010. According to the scorecard, if turnover continued at the current rate, it would take 6.1 months to sell the supply of existing homes on the market, and another 5.6 months for the stock of new homes for sale. Timelines haven’t been that short since 2006. There is always a “but,” however. This month, it’s home prices, which continue to fall despite positive market news. Outstanding...

The mortgage servicer American Home Mortgage Servicing Inc. recently announced a name change to Homeward Residential, reflecting its entrance into the correspondent and warehouse lending market in October 2011. AHMS ranked 18th on a list of top mortgage servicers in 2011 compiled by affiliated publication Inside Mortgage Finance. The company serviced $69.02 billion in residential mortgages at the end of 2011, down 9.7 percent from the year before, with most of its business in non-agency mortgages. The company plans to complete its rebranding as Homeward Residential by the second quarter of 2012. The business...

The massive shakeout in the warehouse financing industry that began in 2007 has left the door wide open for community banks and mid-sized regional financial institutions to enter and become essential providers of warehouse lending. Among the recent new entrants is EverBank Financial Corp., of Jacksonville, which last month signed an agreement to acquire MetLife’s warehouse finance business, boosting its potential to be one of the major players in the resurging sector. Terms and conditions of the acquisition agreement remain undisclosed and the deal is expected to be completed by the first half of 2012...

The Federal Housing Finance Agency Office of Inspector General took the FHFA to task this week for what the OIG considers the agency’s lax supervision of Freddie Mac’s relationship with its servicers. Specifically, the FHFA has not clearly defined its role regarding servicers, sufficiently coordinated with other federal banking agencies about risks and supervisory concerns with individual servicers, or timely addressed emerging risks presented by mortgage servicing contractors.