The mortgage servicer American Home Mortgage Servicing Inc. recently announced a name change to Homeward Residential, reflecting its entrance into the correspondent and warehouse lending market in October 2011. AHMS ranked 18th on a list of top mortgage servicers in 2011 compiled by affiliated publication Inside Mortgage Finance. The company serviced $69.02 billion in residential mortgages at the end of 2011, down 9.7 percent from the year before, with most of its business in non-agency mortgages. The company plans to complete its rebranding as Homeward Residential by the second quarter of 2012. The business...

Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase will once again receive servicer incentives for modifying loans after more than seven months during which these payments were withheld by the Treasury Department for unsatisfactory performance in the Home Affordable Modification Program. The two banks will also get all the withheld incentives as part of the multistate foreclosure settlement. In June 2011, Bank of America, JPMorgan and Wells Fargo were all called to the carpet by the Treasury for their HAMP performance following a 10-month audit of participating servicers. The main issue was timeliness – while mods...

The Justice Department and some members of Congress are unconvinced the mortgage industry is up to the task of fairly making and servicing mortgages in a tough housing market. That’s motivating them to use all of the tools at their disposal – and considering new ones – to combat discrimination and other abusive behavior. “In the coming year, we will continue our efforts to provide justice to those families who were harmed by discriminatory conduct during the mortgage boom and to hold lenders responsible for their actions,” U.S. Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez said in testimony before the Senate Judiciary...

The Federal Housing Finance Agency is not backing away from its plan to overhaul servicing compensation on government-sponsored enterprise mortgages, but an official has acknowledged that the change will come more slowly than first expected. FHFA Special Advisor Mario Ugoletti told attendees at the Mortgage Bankers Association’s Mortgage Servicing Conference & Expo in Orlando two weeks ago that “servicing compensation reform [is] not dead or on the back burner,” contrary to the industry’s hopeful expectations. Ugoletti said any revisions to servicing compensation practices ought to result in enhanced...

The extension of the Home Affordable Modification Program announced in late January was coupled with changes, including the new eligibility of investor-owned properties. While the expansion of the program could allow for a half million more participants, there are complaints that it is no more than a taxpayer bailout of speculators. Timothy Massad, the assistant secretary for financial stability at the Department of Treasury, said the inclusion of investor-owned properties will help low- to moderate-income renters, because the foreclosure of investor-owned properties disproportionately affects them. An advocate for...

The Federal Housing Finance Agency’s hands-off approach to regulating Freddie Mac’s relationship with servicers is a problem, according to a new report from the regulator’s inspector general. While the FHFA has taken some steps, like its Servicing Alignment Initiative, the IG said that the regulator should be looking directly at the books of servicers and other counterparties, instead of taking the government-sponsored enterprises’ versions of events. The regulator’s ability to keep track of the GSE servicer risk might be “impaired by its lack of direct access to servicer books and records relating to the...

Last week, the Federal Reserve Board released action plans that Bank of America, Citigroup, EverBank, JPMorgan Chase, MetLife, PNC, SunTrust, US Bancorp and Wells Fargo developed and will have to implement per the consent orders issued last April in order to correct alleged deficiencies in residential mortgage loan servicing and foreclosure procedures. The Fed also released engagement letters between the institutions and the independent consultants they retained to review foreclosures that were in process in 2009 and 2010...

Consumer advocates may be railing against the $25 billion settlement the five largest mortgage servicers struck recently with 49 state attorneys general, but the participating banks are still vulnerable on a number of fronts, according to a top analyst at Moody’s Investors Service. On the one hand, “The settlement will have little to no financial effect on the banks and will remove some of the uncertainty surrounding mortgage servicing,” said Joseph Pucella, vice president and senior…

Federal Housing Finance Agency Special Advisor Mario Ugoletti told attendees at the Mortgage Bankers Association’s National Mortgage Servicing Conference & Expo in Orlando that changes to servicing compensation practices have not been pushed to the backburner. However, he did concede that, in light of uncertainties in the marketplace and the legislative and regulatory environment, changes would not be promulgated in the next quarter or two. Any revisions to compensation practices ought to result in enhanced competition in mortgage servicing and be capable of replication ...

Acquisitions boosted Ocwen Financial to the top subprime servicer spot at the end of 2011, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside Nonconforming Markets. However, that was not the only significant movement among the top five subprime servicers, as American Home Mortgage Servicing changed more than its name. Ocwen serviced an $84.73 billion subprime portfolio at the end of 2011, a whopping 49.9 percent increase compared with the end of 2010. During that time, the amount of subprime mortgages outstanding decreased by 9.2 percent to an estimated $545.0 billion ... [Includes one data chart]