Loan Think

By now you've heard all the talk about the White House plan to hit a button and automatically refinance $2 trillion of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans. The idea is to help both current mortgagors with LTVs north of 100% and late payers who are contemplating a strategic default.

Starting today, your appraisals are going to look a bit different. Basically, the agencies have been warning us for the last year or so that they were creating a uniform set of "codes" that will be used by all appraisers nationwide.

It's now official: Bank of America has told the world that it's throwing its correspondent lending division overboard. Top managers in the group received word this morning. Of course, the news was inevitable.

For those of us who live on the East Coast, we certainly had plenty of reminders about impending disasters this past week.

To sell your servicing ‘released' – or not. That is the question. It's no secret that SRP (servicing released premiums) prices have been weak the past few years, but nonbank lenders take the cash up front because, well, it's cash. Of course, the megabanks (Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and JPMorgan Chase) have been stingy on what they offer, realizing that they have a huge advantage over smaller players.

A victim in a foreclosure scam and sale/leaseback transaction cannot state a TILA claim because the victim is not a “consumer” and the transaction is not a "consumer credit transaction" within the meaning of TILA. See Scott v/ Dearcp REO. Inc.TILA ¶¶ 1.04[16]. 1.04[17],U.S.D.C. NJ.

One of the most maddening subjects to report on in all of mortgage banking is the nonperforming loan sector.

Let's put Bank of America on the couch. If anyone can figure out its absolutely schizophrenic approach to mortgages over the past two decades drop me a line. Remember when it owned a subprime lender back in the 1990s and actually liquidated the thing even though it was making money?

The White House has been talking up a plan to help underwater borrowers who actually want to stay in their homes refinance, but from what we're hearing from lobbyists and at least one former administration official, it may be too little, too late.

If you had the steel nerves to buy thousands of shares in Bank of America stock a few days ago at $6.01 each then you woke up this morning to the happy news that Warren Buffett will invest $5 billion in the struggling megabank. If you bought the stock at just over $6, your two-day return would be 29%. Not bad.