Servicing

As part of its disposal of U.S. consumer banking businesses, HSBC Holdings PLC is shopping HSBC Mortgage Corp. around. As with many yard sale offerings, the property's attractiveness is up for debate.

The expansion-minded MetLife Home Loans has hired two former executives from Sovereign Bank to manage its new warehouse lending division, National Mortgage News has learned.

A Fitch upgrade of Bank of America's stock is tempered by the depository's high level of non-performing loans and the potential for large numbers of mortgage repurchases due to representation and warranty issues.

While the call for the creation of a catastrophic insurance fund for mortgage-backed securities has been gaining ground in recent weeks, two leading Federal Reserve Board economists are poised to push the concept one step further, suggesting a backstop for all asset-backed securities.

WASHINGTON—Lenders are not only facing increasing loan-repurchase demands from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—but according to the GSEs, seller/servicers are falling behind on repayments.

Some 23.8% of 1,000 local real estate brokers, agents and appraisers in the Gulf Coast area surveyed by Clear Capital reported a negative impact on their markets from the disastrous oil spill.

Mortgage servicers completed 36,700 permanent HAMP modifications in July, down from 51,200 in the previous month, according to the Treasury Department.

According to the Harvard Joint Center's latest report on housing, the number of households in America is expected to grow over the coming decade. The study projects an average growth of anywhere from 1.25 million to 1.5 million households per year, depending on immigration. This rate of growth in household formation would well outpace the last five years, when growth was less than 1 million households per year.

Default and asset manager provider Altisource Portfolio Solutions is adding short sale and deed-in-lieu services to mortgage lenders and servicers.

Most maturing loans already in special servicing are either delinquent or in foreclosure, according to the latest Fitch Ratings weekly newsletter. The rating agency says this trend is likely to continue into 2011, when 2,198 fixed-rate commercial mortgage loans (representing $26.5 billion) mature, with 17% already in special servicing.