Servicing

It's a sign of the dismal state of the housing market that a combined $14 billion bailout in the third quarter for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac no longer merits front-page headlines.

The Federal Housing Administration, which sold more than 102,000 government-owned homes in fiscal year 2011, expects to sell that many again in the new fiscal year.

The ever-optimistic National Association of Realtors believes the worst housing downturn since the Great Depression is almost over.

House and Senate conferees will not restore the $729,750 maximum loan limit on GSE-backed mortgages in high cost areas, sources told National Mortgage News this weekend -- but they have agreed to bump up the limit on Federal Housing Administration loans in lower cost areas.

Bank of America's residential servicing department Friday entered into a settlement with the Department of Justice to reimburse members of the military whose homes were foreclosed on while they were on active duty.

The Securities and Exchange Commission could hurt the housing recovery if it imposes tighter restrictions on real estate investment trusts that purchase and securitize mortgages, according to industry comments filed with the agency.

Despite continuing housing market and mortgage-related challenges, builder D.R. Horton Inc. generated profits in its fourth fiscal quarter and full fiscal year ending Sept. 30 that improved upon the same quarter last year but were lower than FY 2010.

Fortress Investment Group appears to be the winning bidder on a $50 billon package of mortgage servicing rights being peddled by Bank of America, according to industry analysts watching the deal.

The New York banking department has reached an agreement with Morgan Stanley to implement new mortgage servicing standards after signing a similar deal with Goldman Sachs in September.

A new Senate bill proposing to wind down the GSEs by at least 10% a year also includes a provision that would replace the private MERS System with an identical platform run by the Federal Housing Finance Agency -- along with new national standards for mortgage title transfers.