The wrath of Wall Street has descended upon Richmond, CA, after the city council adopted a plan using eminent domain to seize underwater mortgages, as a last resort, and resell them to beleaguered homeowners at a lower price. The American Securitization Forum, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association and the Association of Mortgage Investors condemned Richmond’s decision to implement an April 2 agreement with Mortgage Resolution Partners (MRP) to use eminent domain to address the city’s severe foreclosure problem. The city became the first municipality in the country to adopt such an approach, though not the first to consider the idea. Richmond, like many California cities and municipalities, was hit...
Certain provisions in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s proposed changes to its mortgage servicing rule conflict with Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s own servicing guidelines and should be amended, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency. In a comment letter, the Finance Agency cited the similar goals of the FHFA’s single, consistent set of servicing procedures established in 2011 to form the Servicing Alignment Initiative and the bureau’s 2013 Mortgage Servicing Final Rule. …
Mortgage lenders and servicers are dealing with increased regulatory scrutiny, compressed margins and a competitive origination environment. As interest rates continue to rise, firms are finding that many of the loans they currently service may no longer qualify as suitable refinance candidates. Additionally, as property values stabilize, a growing number of borrowers may become easy targets for other lenders. To address these issues, Rumson, NJ-based Loan Value Group has developed a package of ...
Ocwen Financial Solutions Private Limited, a vendor based in India, received high marks from Morningstar Credit Ratings. OFS is a subsidiary of Ocwen Financial that handles servicing for more than 50 clients. Morningstar said the vendor’s metrics meet or exceed industry standards for customer relationship management, homeownership retention and delinquency management. “Ocwen India, with its multiple servicing platforms, extensive and ...
Mortgage delinquencies increased by nearly 10 percent in June compared with the previous month, following five months of declines, according to Lender Processing Services. The increase is seen as a seasonal move, with delinquencies expected to continue to decline over the long-term. LPS last week estimated that the total delinquency rate, loans 30 or more days past due but not in foreclosure, was 6.68 percent as of the end of June, up from 6.08 percent in May. Foreclosures also increased ...
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s new criteria for error notices and information requests present considerable challenges to mortgage servicers, according to a new PricewaterhouseCooper analysis. Implementing the changes will require careful review and updates to systems, processes and responsibilities to ensure servicers’ compliance with the new standards, said PwC. The new procedures for error notices and information requests are based on existing rules for responding to qualified written requests ...
Once upon a time, in the third quarter of 2005, Countrywide Financial became the first company to amass a mortgage servicing portfolio of over $1 trillion. Just three years later, the company would be consumed by a hungry giant, Bank of America, which in the process became the first – and only – $2 trillion mortgage servicer. During the second quarter of 2013, BofA gave up its chair in the $1 trillion servicing club, reporting a 16.7 percent drop in its portfolio that left the company with “just” $988.6 billion in servicing. Since peaking at an industry record of $2.160 trillion at the end of 2009, BofA has managed to shrink its portfolio by a whopping 54.2 percent. The bank shed...[Includes one data chart]
State and federal regulators appear to be close to getting more servicers to agree to a settlement similar to the $25 billion deal agreed to by five big banks.
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