Opinion

Ocwen to Houston: We Don't Have a Problem

For the past week we've been hearing rumors that Ocwen might close the Houston office space/platform it inherited when it bought Litton Loan Servicing early in the fall. But not so, says Ocwen senior vice president and general counsel Paul Koches. “We are keeping all the space,” he told us. That's good news for the employees who occupy a whole office building in the city. Meanwhile it appears that Lew Ranieri's Selene Finance is staffing up and yes, he's hired Larry Litton Jr. and some former executives of Litton…

Supposedly another top-ranked subservicing shop that does quite a bit of business with Fannie Mae is scouting locations in Houston. Hint: It's not the ultra-secretive IBM

Meanwhile, what's going on with Ocwen's IPO of its affiliate Home Loan Services of the Cayman Islands? Oh, wait I'm sorry, Ocwen doesn't own HLSS, but the firm's management team includes Ocwen head honcho Bill Erby and several executives who currently (also) work for Ocwen. Once HLSS goes public, guess what? All those Ocwen executives who are doing double time at HLSS will resign from Ocwen and work for just HLSS. (So says the SEC filing.) HLSS's core mission is to buy mortgage servicing rights. Among those that it hopes to buy from is—drum roll please—Ocwen. Erby (sort of) owns HLSS or has committed to buy $10 million of its shares. Totally confused by what's going on with this deal? It looks like Ocwen is trying to unlock value in its MSRs and subservicing contracts by engineering the sale of product to a newly created entity. Interesting stuff. We'll be looking at it more in the weeks ahead…

We heard that some Arch Bay executives might be toying with the idea of launching a title company…

The sale of Broadview Mortgage to a bank has apparently fallen through…

Why does it take forever for certain megabanks to close a loan? The answer will be in the Monday edition of NMN. Don't subscribe? Call 800-221-1809. A sub to NMN gets you full access to the premium content on our website…

Servicing executives tell us that one Federal Housing Finance Agency executive—with extreme prodding from Fannie Mae—is hell bent on a “fee for service” compensation model and wants to totally kill the current 25 basis point minimum servicing fee…

Fannie's 3Q earnings should be out next week. I wonder if it did as well with its hedges as Freddie Mac?...

We understand that a portfolio of nonperforming loans once sold by Morgan Stanley may be retrading soon, or at least chunks of it might be. Have any information? Drop me a line at Paul.Muolo@Sourcemedia.com...

A certain trade group executive recently got hit with a cease and desist order…

WASHINGTON NEWS: According to reporting by NMN's Brian Collins, a decision to restore the $729,750 maximum loan limit on Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac loans likely will be made by House and Senate leaders—and not the appropriators. For more, visit the NMN main website.

MORTGAGE PEOPLE: PNC Real Estate gave vice president and servicing operations manager Dennis Siefers the additional task of overseeing its government services group.

DATA NOTE No. 1: NMN is in the process of collecting its third-quarter surveys. If you would like to participate in our survey, send an email to Deartra.Todd@SourceMedia.com. Dee can also tell you about our Quarterly Data Report product which has top 100 rankings in many different sectors…

IMPORTANT DATA STUFF: MortgageStats.com is alive and well. This exclusive data website soon will be updated with new HMDA information. MortgageStats boasts the nation's top 8,000 lenders and 400 servicers, including hard volume numbers and contact information. It also includes exclusive monthly analysis from me. (You can't get this information anywhere else.) For more information drop an email to Deartra.Todd@SourceMedia.com...

I'm on Twitter, discussing mortgage matters and University of Maryland soccer, who tied Wake Forest 1-1 last night in College Park.

LAST WORD: The new Tom Waits LP? It's not so good, and I'm a fan.

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