Loan Think

I'm busy. And sometimes it is easy to forget to do the small things that can make a big difference in our business relationships. It doesn't have to be an extra mile—do the small things on a regular basis and you will deepen your referral relationships.

The formation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the subsequent melding of responsibility for stronger consumer protections have added a greater dimension of regulatory accountability for supervised banks, nonbanks and the third-party service providers they utilize. It means keeping an eye on a few things.

Getting licensed to be a mortgage loan officer is simple – or so some readers have told us. But we’ve also heard stories about failure rates in some states approaching 40%.

At the start of this year, nearly one in four mortgages was underwater and 4.5 million mortgages were seriously delinquent. And today, some studies estimate that as many as 10 million borrowers are at risk of defaulting on their mortgages in the coming years. One of the problems that has made things even harder for struggling homeowners is the state of the mortgage servicing industry.

Tongues are clucking in the industry about the death of the ‘transitory’ license with many nonbank loan officers believing that their depository brethren are at a financial disadvantage.

If you’re not healthy and don’t feel good, how can you possibly run an effective mortgage business? Here are few ideas for you to help improve your physical well-being.

A Mobile, Ala. real estate investor, agreed to plead guilty for his role in a plot to rig bids and commit mail fraud at public real estate foreclosure auctions in Southern Alabama.

For many years, mortgage servicers operated with little or no regulation and only quasi-governance at best. Operational inadequacies were largely ignored as the mortgage banking community was focused on origination…better, faster and highly profitable.This is definitely no longer the case.

In a few weeks we’ll know whether the Treasury Department’s third largest investment in housing/mortgages will file for bankruptcy protection. I’m talking about Residential Capital Corp./GMAC, which recently missed a bond payment and has 30-days to make good on it.

Until recently, the deterioration of properties didn’t pique the interest of servicing agencies until it was clearly designated REO and, until recently, this was all well and good. But the winds have changed.