Nearly a year after the Dodd-Frank Act authorized $1 billion in funding, the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced the start of the Emergency Homeowners Loan Program this week, offering mortgage aid to unemployed homeowners in 28 U.S. states and Puerto Rico. The EHLP is to aid homeowners who, due to a reduction in income, are unemployed or underemployed and at risk of foreclosure. The program is administered...
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau may have been more intensively involved in the 50-state servicer settlement discussions than it has publicly let on, and has tried to keep at least some of its contact with the state attorneys general secret, emails from several state agencies seem to suggest...
The Treasury Department announced that, beginning this month, it is withholding financial incentives for three top mortgage servicers, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo Bank, because their performance in the Obama administrations Making Home Affordable Program was considered inadequate...
Mortgage Guaranty Insurance Company chalked one up in the win column in some litigation its having with Bank of America over MGICs decision to rescind flow-policy coverage of 1,400 or so mortgages that were originated by Countrywide between 2006 and 2008...
Jurisprudence related to Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems continues to evolve, but a majority of courts are validating the role MERS plays in the nations mortgage finance system, according to a new analysis of recent cases by law firm K&L Gates...
The industrys foreclosure debacle including the validity of the transfer of mortgages and the role of MERS has raised a number of critical public policy questions that industry leaders and policymakers will need to resolve if the market and the industry are to return to a fully functioning form once again, a leading industry legal expert told mortgage compliance officials recently...
The Treasury Department withheld payments to Home Affordable Modification servicers for the first time last week. The delay in incentive payments to three major servicers was due to poor handling of non-agency mortgages. Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase Bank and Wells Fargo Bank will not receive HAMP incentive payments until the Treasury determines that the servicers have made improvements. Ocwen Loan Servicing was also determined to be in need of substantial improvement but the servicer received a pass because of issues related to...[includes one data chart]
The Department of Housing and Urban Development has quietly announced preparations for the termination of FHA HOPE for Homeowners, a program that promised more than it could deliver. In a mortgagee letter, HUD laid out instructions on how to process cases during the programs phase-out period. Launched in September 2008 to assist homeowners at risk of foreclosure, the H4H program will end on Sept. 30, 2011. July 29 is the last day to obtain a new H4H case number for lenders seeking to refinance borrowers into H4H loans after this date, while July 16 is the deadline ...
Ginnie Mae has raised the servicing fee compensation for its Home Equity Conversion Mortgage-Backed Securities (HMBS) program. Currently issuers receive either a flat 6-to-75 basis points monthly servicing fee or a 25-75 bps servicing fee based on a portion of the mortgage interest rate. Effective for HMBS with an issue date on or after July 1, 2011, issuers must select a servicing fee margin of at least 36 bps and not exceeding ...