A new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of heretofore undisclosed data about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buyback demands reveals that individual lenders have faced varying levels of exposure and success in beating back these requests. The government-sponsored enterprises joined other financial asset securitizers in making historic new disclosures regarding the repurchase demands they have made over the years based on a loan originator’s breach of representations and warranties. Rules for the new disclosures, an outcome of the Dodd-Frank Act, were developed by the...(Includes one data chart)

Bank of America this week announced that it is sharply curtailing its mortgage business with Fannie Mae, partly because of differences over buyback demands. The company said it has stopped selling Fannie purchase-money mortgages and refinance loans that are not originated under the Home Affordable Refinance Program. The problem, BofA said, resulted from a mutual decision by the bank and the government-sponsored enterprise not to renew a delivery contract that allowed the bank to sell loans to Fannie efficiently. “While we continue to have a valid agreement with Fannie Mae permitting the delivery of...

Wells Fargo sucked up more than half of the correspondent business Bank of America left on the table after deciding to get out of the business of aggregating closed loans from correspondent lenders, according to an Inside Mortgage Trends analysis. Wells Fargo increased its sales of correspondent loans to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by $14.1 billion during the fourth quarter, slightly more than half of the total increase in correspondent deliveries to the government-sponsored enterprises. Wells increased its correspondent mortgage sales to the GSEs by 87.4 percent during the fourth quarter, while...

The departure of MetLife from the residential mortgage market in early January has been a boon for Caliber Funding, a national wholesale and retail mortgage lender looking to expand its presence in existing markets across the country and entering new markets. As MetLife exited, Caliber Funding quickly scooped up approximately 300 former retail loan officers in MetLife’s Home Loan division and announced the addition of four new regional markets. Combining MetLife’s former LOs with newly hired wholesale producers and support staff, the Dallas-based lender is set to enhance its presence in California, Arizona...

Santa Ana, CA-based CoreLogic this week unveiled DefaultView, a new, cloud-based, end-to-end servicing product that’s designed to streamline the way mortgage servicers handle loans through every stage of the default lifecycle. The new product utilizes nine modules that interconnect within its architecture to help provide a more efficient and transparent default servicing operation. DefaultView employs a master-loan architecture that provides the client with a singular view of a loan. “This design enables end users across a default enterprise to easily see a complete transaction history including workflow...

Of the $25 billion in penalties agreed upon for the multistate servicing settlement, approximately $2.66 billion in cash is going to individual states to provide relief for funds lost through servicer wrongdoing, though states are spending their cash differently. Without the settlement terms, which have yet to be released, it is impossible to know the parameters for which the 49 states in the agreement and the federal government can use their money from Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Ally Financial. Through announcements by public officials, however, a picture of...

Many homeowners are still being moved to foreclosure while loan modifications are pending, a survey shows. A survey of 260 attorneys by the National Association of Consumer Advocates, the National Consumer Law Center and the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys found that at least 3,700 homeowners were placed in foreclosure last year while waiting for a loan modification. Moreover, more than 78 percent of respondents said they had homeowner clients who had had been placed in foreclosure in the last year because the servicer did not properly accept the homeowner payments...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have asked lenders to repurchase some $76.4 billion of mortgages under representations and warranties provisions in their contracts, although a significant volume of these demands ended up being withdrawn by the two government-sponsored enterprises. A new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis of reps and warranties disclosures made by Fannie and Freddie shows that 37.3 percent of the buyback demands made by the GSEs over the years ended up being withdrawn. Fannie, Freddie and other mortgage securitizers are now required to file reps and warranties...(Includes one data chart)

Citigroup, Inc. this week agreed to settle a civil fraud lawsuit with the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Department of Housing and Urban Development alleging reckless mortgage lending practices. The $158.3 million settlement was reached on Feb. 15, hours after Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, filed a civil fraud lawsuit against CitiMortgage, a subsidiary of Citibank. The suit sought treble damages and civil penalties under the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act of 1989 and the False Claims Act, a federal Civil War-era statute Congress passed to ...

While the multistate servicing settlement reached by 49 states, federal officials and the nation’s five largest servicers gets the state and federal attorneys off the banks’ backs in regards to servicing and foreclosure, the banks are still wide open to servicing lawsuits from individuals, criminal charges and litigation over their securitization activities. “This is only one part of a long resolution process,” said Richard Andreano, practice leader of Ballard Spahr’s mortgage banking group. Despite complaints from a wide swath of consumer protection groups that the $25 billion in penalties to be...