Commercial banks – the megabanks in particular – appear to be moderating their retreat from servicing loans pooled into Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae securities. But most of the largest gains in the third quarter came from nonbanks with one glaring decline: Ocwen Financial. According to loan-level data compiled by Inside Mortgage Finance, Ocwen serviced $64.22 billion of agency collateral at Sept. 30, a blood curdling 33.7 percent sequential drop and a sign that al-though the publicly traded nonbank plans to remain a servicer of conventional loans, it continues to sell mortgage servicing rights and deleverage its balance sheet. The megabanks – Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and U.S. Bank – ranked...[Includes two data tables]
Several $1 billion-plus mortgage servicing packages have reached the auction market the past few weeks as sellers try to complete deals before yearend. But one potential obstacle could gum up the works: a continuing decline in interest rates. With the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury hovering just above the 2.0 percent mark, mortgage rates are now at their lowest levels since the spring. And as any servicing investor knows: A declining interest rate environment is never a good thing to sell into. In early September, U.S. Trading LLC, Cherry Hill, NJ, hit...
The Department of Housing and Urban Development late last week withdrew a controversial proposed rule that aimed to speed the process by which residential servicers file FHA insurance claims. A number of industry participants were critical of the proposed claims-filing deadline, warning that it would prompt significant problems. Among other provisions, the proposal issued in July would have established a deadline for insurance claims to be filed with the FHA. “This new deadline will ensure FHA can effectively manage and process timely claims,” HUD said at the time. Originally, the agency proposed...
Mortgage lenders face a growing risk from cyberattacks from an increasingly sophisticated hacker universe, as well as more regulatory scrutiny over the issue, according to experts at this week’s annual convention of the Mortgage Bankers Association. “There is an arms bazaar of malware for sale in the market, with about 300 new programs – that we know about – being released every day,” said Roger Cressey, a partner at Liberty Group Ventures. The market has been turned into a business, with malware sellers forging service level agreements with their customers through which the buyer doesn’t have to pay if the product doesn’t result in a successful intrusion, he said. Because many hackers are more interested in stealing the target’s client information than crashing its system, the mortgage industry – which sits on mountains of personally identifiable information – is...
Yet, here’s loanDepot, a firm launched just five years ago by industry veteran Anthony Hsieh, filing its S-1 statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission…
Consumer complaints to the CFPB about mortgages filed during the third quarter fell in most of the significant categories tracked by Inside the CFPB – with issues about the application and origination process being the one notable exception. Gripes in this regard rose 4.1 percent from the second quarter to the third, and increased a larger 12.6 percent at the nine-month mark versus a year ago, our latest analysis found. But at just 1,644 complaints, the number of homebuyer criticisms in this regard pales when compared to the huge number of mortgage applications and originations made during the same period. It is also important to note the seasonality associated with complaints in this area, as they tend to be highest during ...