Mortgage servicers have not maximized their potential outreach to borrowers facing foreclosure in the wake of the consent orders issued last year by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Reserve and the Office of Thrift Supervision, according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office. The same can be said for the regulators. “Regulators and servicers have gradually increased their efforts to reach eligible borrowers and have taken steps to improve communication materials,” the GAO said, but they failed to undertake such “best practices” ...

The overhang of severely delinquent and in-foreclosure residential mortgages continues to challenge large banks with extensive mortgage operations, while it also affects the economic environment for all banks, according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.The OCC’s latest Semiannual Risk Perspective report flagged three major risk concerns for the banking industry: the aftereffects of the recent housing-driven credit boom-bust cycle; the challenges to banking industry revenue growth after the recession; and the potential that banks may take excessive risks in an effort to ...

A larger percentage of loans originated over the past three years show evidence of collusion fraud among parties to the transaction, according to LexisNexis. Prior to 2009, collusion fraud – defined as incidents of verified, non-arm’s length transactions – was reported on less than 5.0 percent of loans, the company said. For loans originated in 2009, that rate jumped to 7.0 percent and then to 9.7 percent in 2010. The rate edged down to 6.8 percent for 2011 originations, but experts think the reported numbers understate the prevalence of such fraud.“Because these complex relationships ...

Mortgages sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are increasingly coming from lenders’ retail production channels, according to a new analysis by Inside Mortgage Trends. In the second quarter of 2012, 58.1 percent of single-family loans securitized by the government-sponsored enterprises were retail originations, up from 52.9 percent in the first quarter. Broker originations dropped from 10.8 percent of GSE business to 9.0 percent, and the correspondent share slipped from 36.3 percent to 32.9 percent. After accounting for a whopping 83.2 percent of Fannie/Freddie business in the first quarter ...

Representatives of the mortgage lending and securitization sectors are deeply concerned about and strongly opposed to a move in California that would use eminent domain to seize current non-agency mortgage loans and force their terms to be modified to ensure the affected homeowners can stay in their homes. The California county of San Bernardino and the cities of Ontario and Fontana have proposed to create a “joint powers authority to assist in preserving home ownership and occupancy for homeowners with negative equity within the parties’ jurisdictions,” according to a resolution adopted by the...

Delinquencies on home-equity loans increased in the first quarter of 2012 and industry analysts expect further increases even though first-lien mortgage performance has been improving. The top two holders of HELs have differing strategies on HEL originations, and some smaller banks are also pushing the products. The serious delinquency rate on HELs hit 2.83 percent in the first quarter of 2012, according to the Inside Mortgage Finance Bank Mortgage Database. Delinquencies increased 34.1 percent from the end of 2011 and ...

Loan modifications performed on mortgages in bank portfolios perform much better than mods on mortgages included in non-agency mortgage-backed securities, according to an analysis by Inside Nonconforming Markets of new data from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The performance varies significantly even as the two types of non-agency mortgages receive the vast majority of principal reduction loan mods. The 12-month re-default rate on mods implemented from 2008 through the first quarter of 2011 was ...

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is revising its definition of subprime mortgages in an effort to better compare bank portfolios, according to analysts that worked on the rule proposed by the FDIC in March. Brenda Bruno, a senior financial analyst at the FDIC, said the regulator is looking to classify “the worst” of subprime mortgages as higher-risk. “We are looking at those assets that are really sort of the ‘bottom of the barrel’ type assets,” she said last week during a webinar sponsored by VantageScore Solutions ...

Subprime mortgage-backed securities offer returns of at least 10.0 percent per year for selective investors, according to Bill Roth, co-CIO at Two Harbors Investment. “We are able to assume the default of a significant portion of borrowers who are currently making their payments, assume a declining housing market and still be able to earn an attractive yield,” Roth said last week during a webinar hosted by the real estate investment trust. He added that home prices could decline by another 20 percent in the next year and ...

Given the features of the enhanced FHA streamline refinancing product, investors will be focusing on the FHA low mortgage-insurance premium (MIP) pools in the coming months, according to analysts with Barclays Research. Barclay’s analysts estimate that 27 percent of outstanding Ginnie Mae MBS pools are eligible for streamline refinancing, which could translate to $36 billion in new annual Ginnie Mae issuance. Approximately $293.0 billion of Ginnie Mae’s $1 trillion-plus 30-year loan pools were originated before May 2009, analysts said. About 79 percent of the collateral underlying the pools are ...