New Residential Investment plans to complete an asset purchase with Home Loan Servicing Solutions instead of a merger, the firms announced this week. New Residential agreed to pay HLSS $1.4 billion, largely in cash. The sale substantially mitigates servicer advance funding risk, according to industry analysts. The firms said New Residential acquired substantially all of the assets of HLSS and assumed substantially all of HLSS’ liabilities ...

The Department of Veterans Affairs will continue removing barriers to delivering home-loan benefits to veterans and service members in 2015, focusing more on further improvements in appraisal and servicing.

A focus on special servicing has helped Rushmore Loan Management Services increase its portfolio in recent years. Standard & Poor’s also recently upgraded the firm’s special servicing rating to “above average.”

After much speculation, Fannie Mae announced on Wednesday its first ever auction of nonperforming loans to qualified bidders. It includes a pool of approximately 3,200 loans totaling $786 million in unpaid principal balance.

The latest National Mortgage Settlement data from the Office of Mortgage Settlement Oversight shows that at least 314,485 borrowers received some form of relief from Ocwen and SunTrust combined through the fourth quarter of 2014.

The Irvine-based Citadel continues to ramp up its staff and hopes to hire another 15 to 20 workers by the end of June.

Once again, consumer criticisms about residential mortgages led the decline in both timeframes.

The replenishment rate is calculated by dividing servicing outstanding by annual production volume.

The disclosure is buried in the details of Freddie’s recent 10-Q filing with Securities and Exchange Commission.

According to the FHLB-NY, a limited number of investors – and members – have been approved for the pilot.