Industry observers believe that FHFA Director Mel Watt – who has been on the job since early January – wants to open up the “credit box” for low- and moderate-income borrowers.

The good news for the mortgage industry is that the bulk of Dodd-Frank-required mortgage rules have already been issued.

Banks that extend warehouse lines of credit to non-depositories are suffering from a usage drought on their loans, forcing them to consider other asset classes to finance, including mortgage servicing rights. According to industry advisors and warehouse officials, there are at least half a dozen large banks that are dipping their toe into the MSR financing pool or contemplating such a move. “From what I’m seeing, a number of warehouse banks are looking...

There has been a resurgence of city lawsuits lately against major banks seeking to recover lost property tax revenues, which city officials say were needed to pay for expensive foreclosure-related city services. The latest in these lawsuits was filed by the City of Los Angeles against JPMorgan Chase alleging discriminatory mortgage lending led to a wave of foreclosures that continues to diminish revenue for basic city services. The new litigation against Chase comes...

Aurora Loan Services, once a huge player in the non-agency subprime and Alt A market, has agreed to resolve a class-action lawsuit alleging it duped distressed borrowers into paying monthly fees on nonperforming loans that were already destined for foreclosure. The $5.3 million settlement will be split among 15,000 California borrowers who signed bogus loan-workout agreements with the false hope of curing their deficiencies and keeping their homes. Borrowers claimed that Aurora had misled them into thinking that their foreclosures were on hold while they were being considered for loan modification. In reality, however, Aurora’s policy was...

Individual accountability is the regulatory catchphrase of the moment not only at the CFPB but at the Securities and Exchange Commission and state regulatory agencies as well.

Some in the industry are concerned that HAMP interest-rate resets, which begin later this year, could cause defaults on modified loans to increase, lowering the number of successful modifications under the program.

Some 14 percent of Green Tree’s $196 billion servicing portfolio is subject to the national servicing settlement, according to Fitch.

Treasury and the FHFA not only acted “arbitrarily and capriciously” in executing the Third Amendment to the Preferred Stock Purchase Agreements with the GSEs, the agencies ignored “salient data,” including Fannie’s and Freddie’s tens of billions of dollars in deferred tax assets.

“We have a lot of plans,” Newman told IMFnews. “We plan to be in originations, servicing, capital markets and multi-channel production.”