In a 10-K filing, PHH said its mortgage business relies on just two firms for 41 percent of its private-label retail business: Merrill Lynch Home Loans at 29 percent and Morgan Stanley at 12 percent.
Servicers would face annual government certifications and biennial examinations by the new regulator/insurance fund. Minimum operational and management standards would be created for internal controls, recordkeeping, audit systems, and reporting, to name just a few.
How does the Johnson-Crapo bill favor senior preferred shareholders? The language notes that when assets in Fannie and Freddie are eventually sold, the idea is to “maximize the return for the senior preferred share-holders of the enterprises”…
CFPB Deputy Director Steve Antonakes isn’t toning down his antagonistic stance towards mortgage servicers. Speaking at the National Community Reinvestment Coalition Annual Conference in Washington, DC, last week, Antonakes rattled the bureau’s sabre at the market sector again, saying, “We expect servicers to pay exceptionally close attention to servicing transfers and they should understand that we will as well. “Servicing transfers where the new servicers are not honoring existing permanent or trial loan modifications will not be tolerated,” he added. “Struggling borrowers being told to pay incorrect higher amounts because of the failure to honor an in-process loan modification – and then being punished with foreclosure for their inability to pay the incorrect amounts – will not be tolerated.”
Regulators have been paying closer attention to the mortgage servicing practices of the large nonbank servicers, but they’re not the bad actors their critics make them out to be, analysts at Compass Point Research & Trading concluded recently. “Overall, we believe there is some merit to the operational concerns about portfolio growth for the special servicers, but the longer-term track record of the special servicers is strong and the near-term operational issues likely will be temporary,” the Compass Point team said.The analysts compared the servicing practices between the largest bank and nonbank mortgage servicers.
An affiliate of Nationstar Mortgage is preparing to issue an ABS backed by servicer advances and deferred servicing fee receivables, continuing a trend of nonbank servicers fueling their growth via securitization. Industry analysts suggest that the deals offer good returns to investors, even with regulators increasing their scrutiny of nonbanks. The $1.96 billion servicer advance ABS from New Residential Investment is expected to close on March 18, according to a presale report by Standard & Poor’s. The deal is set to receive a AAA rating from the rating service. “Based on the nature of the assets which historically display high recovery typically at the top of the waterfall, we would view...
For those of you tracking the lawsuits filed by GSE preferred investors against the federal government, one attorney told us this week that: “These cases won’t be resolved for years." Meanwhile, it appears that the CSP still has no CEO.
More lenders have expressed concern about a provision in the proposed FY 2015 federal budget seeking congressional authority to collect $30 million to help improve and strengthen FHA quality assurance reviews. Under the president’s budget proposal, FHA would collect an “administrative fee” from FHA lenders to implement the quality assurance (QA) changes needed to provide a clearer, more transparent picture of enforcement going forward. The improvements are meant to provide lenders not only information about early payment default or other kinds of default characteristics through loan sampling but also an accurate snapshot of their “manufacturing risk,” which is the risk that a loan is not underwritten properly. “The purpose is for lenders to have the information six to nine months after they have originated the loan as opposed to ...
The FY 2015 proposed budget is estimating a positive capital reserve of $7.8 billion for the FHA Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund by the end of fiscal year 2014, meaning the fund will not require a mandatory appropriation from the Department of the Treasury this year, according to federal housing regulators. Last year, the president’s budget projected a $943 million Treasury subsidy to the FHA in order to meet statutory budgetary requirements but ended up requesting $1.7 billion by the end of fiscal year on Sept. 30. The latest independent actuarial audit found that the MMIF’s net worth has improved $15 billion from the previous year’s estimates, growing from negative $16.3 billion to negative $1.3 billion. In addition, the fund’s capital reserve ratio improved from negative 1.44 percent to negative 0.11 percent. The MMIF is now expected to ...