Loan Think

Recent news reports that bond investors — including the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and PIMCO — may sue Bank of America because Countrywide Financial Corp. did a bad job of servicing loans that went into ABS/MBS have been a bit misleading.

Yeah, times are tough and you get deals where you can get them, right? But, ask yourself this question—does it take any more work to get a $150,000 deal closed—than it takes to get a $450,000 deal closed?

The mortgage/housing/subprime mess has cost U.S taxpayers billions of dollars, no doubt. But was the crisis caused by incompetence, greed, fraud or some combination of all three? Former S&L regulator Bill Black (a player in the Lincoln Savings/Keating Five Scandal) points out in a recent email that, "No senior official" at a large subprime lender has been convicted for "making fraudulent loans on behalf of the lender (as opposed to secretly ripping off the lender)."

Well, it’s the end of October. The leaves are falling; the weather has begun to change. This signals an important time of the year for me….planning for what looks to be a good 2011 in the reverse mortgage business.

You remember the S&L crisis, I suppose? That's when the Reagan White House deregulated the savings and loan industry – with the blessing of all the Democrats on Capitol Hill – and allowed the not-so-little thrift industry to finance just about anything that moved. (And they did.)

There are three types of shoppers in today's marketplace, according to one retail sales expert, and there are lessons to be learned from the insurance industry on how to not to deal with the most important class of them.

Well, the big MBA show is underway in Atlanta and some industry leaders delivered a message Monday morning that resounds with most seller/servicers: We've had it with buybacks and we're not going to take it anymore. Quicken Loans CEO William Emerson may've said it best when he noted that repurchase requests from secondary market investors are an "annoyance."

Mortgagees will be able to view sponsored originator performance information in Neighborhood Watch. On a monthly basis, FHA will aggregate sponsored originator performance for a rolling two year period. A link to the sponsored originator performance will be added under the Early Warnings menu selection.

THIS JUST IN: A top-ranked residential servicer, whose platform is in located in the middle of the country (that narrows it down), is on the auction block again, or so we hear. But this firm is also hiring some LOs and retail managers, including Orange County, Calif. Sounds confusing, but maybe it's not. For the full story see the Monday paper edition of National Mortgage News.

The nation's foreclosure mess has definitely slowed sales of nonperforming mortgages because investors in these troubled notes are worried about title issues. (We're told that bid prices have skidded a bit and in some cases auctions have been delayed.) But there's an also an emerging school of thought that says banks may actually step up NPL sales because they, increasingly, have the financial strength to whether the hits – foreclosure crisis or not. We're also starting to see some action in the sale of troubled servicing rights. Interactive Mortgage Advisors of Denver is currently peddling a $2.2 billion portfolio of alt-A servicing that has 13.91% in delinquencies, and 17.21% of foreclosures. For more details on the IMA offering see the National Mortgage News website at: www.nationalmortgagenews.com...