The average time on market for short sales has increased significantly in the past year, according to the latest Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance HousingPulse Tracking Survey. The problems appear to be due to approvals from sellers as well as lenders’ concerns about financing such purchases. Short sales completed in February were on the market for 17 weeks, based on a three-month moving average. That’s a 30.8 percent increase from the average time on market for short sales ...

Fannie, Freddie Helped by Special Servicers. While nonbank servicers are under scrutiny from a number of different parties, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac said special servicers reduce credit losses compared with traditional bank servicers. In its latest earnings report, Freddie said it facilitated the transfer of servicing for $55.6 billion in unpaid principal balance to special servicers in 2013. “Some of these specialty servicers have grown rapidly in the last two years and now service a large share of our loans,” the GSE said.

Not only is the spring home buying season beginning to show signs of life, so too is the M&A market for mortgage companies.

When conflicts of interest were unearthed, Aurora terminated the contract in 2012, leaving $28 million in unpaid bills. But Allonhill wanted its money.

It’s been a busy quarter for sales of mortgage servicing rights, but most of them have involved portfolios of $2 billion or less, spurring talk in the industry that regulatory oversight of MSR transfers is affecting the mergers and acquisition market. In particular, dealmakers are starting to call it the “Lawsky Effect,” named after Benjamin Lawsky, the superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services who in early February put a “hold” on Wells Fargo’s sale of $39 billion in MSRs to Ocwen Financial. Lawsky has stated his concerns about Ocwen’s fast growth, its capacity to take on massive new assignments and complaints about some of its servicing practices. “I have not heard...

Top Democrats on Capitol Hill are peeved that the Justice Department is not making the prosecution of mortgage lender and servicer abuses much of a priority, and they are pressing Attorney General Eric Holder for a meeting to discuss what to do about it. Their ire was raised by a recent report from the DOJ’s Inspector General that found, among other things, that the department had not prioritized the investigation of mortgage fraud and that it reported unreliable, inflated statistics about the scope of its prosecutorial efforts. In a letter to the DOJ, Reps. Elijah Cummings, D-MD, and Maxine Waters, D-CA, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, focused...

The Johnson-Crapo bill would subject Quicken and all the other nonbanks to FDIC-like examinations.

The total amount of principal reduction and refinancing provided by banks for consumer relief under the landmark $25 billion national servicing agreement far exceeded what was required in the agreement, according to final credit reports filed by settlement monitor Joseph Smith. Filed with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia this week, the reports confirmed that Wells Fargo, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, CitiBank and Ally have met their consumer relief and restructuring obligations under the settlement. In total, the five companies provided...

There has been talk in the market that JPM would unload some of its “high touch” MSRs this year, but so far brokers that play in the space have reported no scheduled auctions.

Early in the morning, Ocwen’s share price was up almost 3 percent, but by noon had settled down. Trading volume was slightly above average.