Servicing

If government support of the mortgage market is reduced – either gradually or immediately – and the private sector doesn't fill the void with investment capital, it could have dire consequences for housing and residential finance, according to a new analysis released by Redwood Trust.

At its Nov. 23 meeting next week, the Financial Stability Oversight Council is set to discuss the on-going foreclosure mess and whether it presents a systemic risk to the financial system, according to a Treasury Department official.

The mortgage services division of IBM has taken control of roughly $47 billion in servicing rights from JPMorgan Chase and eventually may increase its contract with the megabank to $100 billion, industry officials close to the deal confirmed to National Mortgage News.

An updated CoreLogic Mortgage Fraud Trends Report finds that while overall mortgage fraud has increased by 20% since fraud hit its lowest level in 2009, refinance fraud saw an even higher increase of 30%.

HUD is forecasting that the Federal Housing Administration will endorse $288.7 billion of single-family loans in fiscal year 2011, a 9.4% decline from FY 2010, which ended September 30.

Investors are starting to receive additional details on what loan types — including information on 'HECM Savers' and FHA modified loans — that issuers are placing in Ginnie Mae guaranteed MBS.

Some of the Federal Housing Administration's largest servicers lacked the technology and staff to expedite the processing of loan modifications, and were unprepared to deal with the escalating backlog of requests, according to FHA commissioner David Stevens.

Foreclosure starts jumped by 20% in the third quarter, representing 1.34% of all outstanding mortgages in the U.S., which means an estimated 830,000 consumers could lose their homes over the next several months.

All four federal bank regulatory agencies are conducting targeted exams of foreclosure practices and policies involving on-site examinations and the sampling of loan files at depositories that control a large portion of the nation's $9.9 trillion in housing receivables.

Federal banking regulators are examining two nonbank service providers at the epicenter of the foreclosure-documentation mess – Lender Processing Services Inc. and Merscorp Inc.’s Mortgage Electronic Registration System.