Walter notes: “We have already achieved cost reductions in a number of areas, but there can be no assurance that we will be able to reduce costs so as to enable the servicing business to return to profitability in the near term or at all.”

Not only has the proposed sale of First Mortgage Co. fallen apart, but a recent lawsuit filed against the company by a new warehouse lending firm raises serious questions about FMC’s recent profitability and its future. As Inside Mortgage Finance went to press this week, FMC was no longer making new loans, but was still servicing its past production, estimated at $1.67 billion. Company owner and CEO Ron McCord – one of six defendants sued by warehouse provider CapLoc – said...

Non-qualified mortgages are starting to look attractive to some nonbanks with refinance activity declining and interest rates projected to increase. Officials at Nationstar Mortgage revealed late last week that they plan to launch a non-QM offering later this year or in early 2018. “You’re starting to see some activity there,” Jay Bray, Nationstar’s president, chairman and CEO, said during the nonbank’s recent earnings call. “And when we look at our portfolio, we may be in the best position in the industry, frankly, to offer some of those products.” Nationstar serviced...

PHH Corp., Ocwen Financial and Walter Investment Management Corp. have quite a bit in common these days: all are large publicly traded lender/servicers that continue to lose money while struggling to find a path to both regulatory redemption and a business model that works. But recent earnings reports and public filings suggest immediate relief looks elusive for all three. For now, Walter – the parent of Ditech Financial, the nation’s 10th largest servicer – appears...

The Department of Justice and three other federal agencies will rake in $182 million from separate agreements by Wells Fargo and PHH Mortgage over False Claims Act charges. The PHH settlement features a rare FCA action involving loans sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Wells Fargo agreed to pay $108 million to settle a whistleblower lawsuit filed in 2006 and unsealed in 2011. It alleged that the bank overcharged veterans by masking unallowable fees and concealing the fact in order to obtain VA guarantees for the mortgage loans. At the same time, Wells allegedly falsely certified to the VA that it was not charging improper fees. Similar charges were brought...

Ocwen Financial caught a potentially big break last week when the judge overseeing its dispute with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau granted its request to invite the Department of Justice to weigh in. “There are at least two clear reasons to invite the Attorney General to participate here,” the company told Judge Kenneth Marra, of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. First, it noted, district courts are required to notify the attorney general of a constitutional challenge in any action in which the U.S. government is not a party. Second, the U.S. attorney general recently filed...

Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mel Watt said it will be at least two years until Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will adopt alternative credit scoring models. A number of groups have been pushing the government-sponsored enterprises to look beyond the FICO score, and Fannie and Freddie have been studying the issue. But Watt said any major change will have to wait until the GSEs have completed the complex single-security project. “Based on the overwhelming feedback we have received from the industry, it is...

The Mortgage Bankers Association said its housing-finance reform proposal would likely have little impact on consumer mortgage costs. Whether costs to consumers are modestly higher or lower will depend on how the different components suggested for reform are determined through the political process, according to the MBA. “While the precise impact on consumer costs from true housing-finance reform may be difficult to gauge, we know...

Purchase mortgages are getting to be a tougher sell as many potential homebuyers say high prices make it a lousy time to buy a house, and sellers are getting less enthusiastic as well. A Fannie Mae survey found that the share of people surveyed who said it was a bad time to buy reached a high of 57 percent in July, while the share who said it was a good time to buy hit a low, 34 percent. The government-sponsored enterprise has been conducting the survey since 2011. “It’s...

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit recently held that mortgage underwriters are not “administrative employees” and, therefore, not exempt from the overtime protections of the Fair Labor Standards Act. The court’s ruling in McKeen-Chaplin v. Provident Savings Bank overturned a lower court decision and deepened a split among the circuit courts on whether certain employees of mortgage companies qualify for overtime pay. Given the conflicting circuit court opinions, attorneys are...