The Department of Housing and Urban Development has made long-awaited increases for claimable attorney fees and extended the foreclosure timeframes in many jurisdictions to help mortgage servicers perform better. The agency sets limits on the attorney fees servicers can claim on an FHA foreclosure and prescribes the length of time for doing due diligence. The last time HUD updated its guidance on fees and “reasonable diligence timeframe” for prosecuting a foreclosure on an FHA-insured loan was in 2005. However, changes in state foreclosure requirements in recent years have made it difficult for FHA servicers to ...

The Department of Housing and Urban Development has updated the timelines and methods servicers must follow for communicating with borrowers in default. Mortgagee Letter 2013-39 also addresses policies for engaging borrowers early in their delinquencies, specialized collection techniques for early-payment defaults or re-default, and FHA’s expectation for servicers to have written processes and procedures to follow for every stage of delinquency up to collection. Communicating early with borrowers who are late in their mortgage payments is essential in ensuring that delinquency is properly addressed, the agency said. HUD’s latest guidance provides a “collection-communication timeline,” which is a series of sequential steps a servicer can follow in dealing with a delinquent borrower. These steps would help the servicer assess a borrower’s circumstances, intentions and financial condition as well as determine an appropriate response.

At Sept. 30, Freedom Mortgage serviced $28.69 billion of home mortgages, an impressive 75 percent jump from the same period a year earlier.

Impac Mortgage originated $576.2 million of home loans in 3Q, a 26 percent sequential decline.

Investors and analysts are starting to wonder if Nationstar Mortgage bit off more than it could chew with its multi-billion dollar servicing purchases of the past two years. Sources say the company recently hired PricewaterhouseCoopers as a consultant to look at its quickly growing $375 billion servicing portfolio. A spokesman for the company dismissed...

Mortgage delinquency rates reached a five-year low during the third quarter of 2013, according to the Inside Mortgage Finance Large Servicer Delinquency Index. A group of 19 lenders that serviced $5.33 trillion of home loans reported that just 6.78 percent of those loans were in some stage of delinquency or default. That figure, which is not seasonally adjusted, was the lowest rate in the index since the third quarter of 2008. The overall delinquency rate improved...[Includes one data chart]

The CFPB expects the vast majority of institutions to be in substantial compliance with its new mortgage rules by the January deadlines.

Cash-out refis are at all-time lows compared to the peak in 2006 when $84 billion in equity was withdrawn by consumers.

One trade group official told Inside Mortgage Finance that despite efforts by the Federal Housing Finance Agency to create g-fee parity for lenders of different sizes, there has been little in the way of progress.

The frothy prices being offered for MSRs are beginning to cool somewhat. “There’s definitely a tighter range on bids lately,” said Matt Maurer, managing director of MountainView Servicing Group.