Servicing

While robo-signing has been the most high-profile foreclosure concern for residential mortgage-backed securities lately, it appears it is a relatively low risk compared to the currently less-prominent one related to missing and defective documents, according to a recent Moody’s Investors Service report.

In their first week back since the midterm elections, lawmakers are taking up the robo-signing scandal in multiple venues.

The Federal Housing Administration ended fiscal 2010 with a cash reserve ratio of just 0.50%, a slight decline from the same period a year ago, but strong enough that Congress will not have to use taxpayer money to bolster the fund.

It’s not as hard as it used to be to find good news in the Mortgage Bankers Association’s delinquency survey.It used to be that the only glimmer of good news was in the performance of Department of Veterans Affairs mortgages and a small contiguous area of low-delinquency states in the Midwest/Mountain area (the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming).

Thanks to intense national scrutiny on the faulty procedural practices by mortgage servicers, foreclosure logjams are intensifying in several markets with little sign of easing anytime soon. Moreover, sources told Mortgage Servicing News that Fannie Mae is now keeping tabs on how much foreclosure moratoriums have cost the GSE, and plans to pass on that cost to its servicers.

Foreclosure-gate has highlighted long-standing flaws in the servicing process, but “larger problems” with the mortgage servicing business will require “serious” reforms, according to Federal Reserve Board governor Sarah Bloom Raskin.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s upcoming safe harbor rules could add to real estate investment trusts' relative advantage in the securitized nonagency residential mortgage space.

The benchmark 10-year Treasury as of midday on Monday had jumpedsignificantly to levels above 2.8% not seen since September.

Fannie Mae has opened a new mortgage counseling center in Phoenix that is part of a larger nationwide Fannie Mae effort to assist distressed homeowners who may be at risk of foreclosure because their loans are owned by the GSE.

The robo-signing mess is "extremely damaging" to the loan modification effort, a Treasury Department official said, because it confirms homeowners' feelings that they can't trust their servicers.