Servicing

Echoing renewed concerns about “large scale lawlessness in the mortgage and foreclosure process,” Americans for Financial Reform has joined a growing chorus of moratorium advocates.

The American Securitization Forum has issued a statement defending the legality of standard industry methods of transferring residential mortgages to securitization trusts following questions that have arisen in the wake of the recent robo-signing foreclosure scandal.

The New York State Superintendent of Banks, Richard Neiman, has a thing for the mortgage servicing industry.By the time 47 state attorneys general and 37 banking and mortgage regulators announced their participation in the multistate effort to address national concerns “about faulty affidavits in foreclosure proceedings,” the New York State Banking Department had already sent letters to over 20 mortgage servicers.

Noting new life in the market for commercial mortgage-backed securities, a survey of industry specialists suggests that issuances could once again reach $100 billion by 2013.

PHH Mortgage Corp. became the latest mortgage servicer to declare it is not initiating a foreclosure moratorium.

To secure title insurance on REO sales, Bank of America has agreed to indemnify a major insurer if the title is challenged due to robo-signings and other improper foreclosure processing practices.

Freddie Mac has begun using the Giant mortgage participation certificates as a way to create economies of scale internally within its retained portfolio, according to a spokesman.

As the national foreclosure crisis continued on unabated this week, the mortgage industry received some sobering news Thursday morning – that bank repossessions reached an all-time high in September as servicers took back a record 102,134 homes.

Rental apartments are the favorite sector for real estate investors, according to an annual survey conducted by the Urban Land Institute and PriceWaterhouseCoopers.

Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair said the growing robo-signing scandal was symptomatic of the poor incentives that marred the securitization market, but she opposed a universal freeze on foreclosures.