Servicing

While mobile applications have become increasingly present in the originations segment of the mortgage industry, they're now making their mark in the servicing space.

A pair of the nation's largest banks, Citigroup and Wells Fargo, made changes to their mortgage banking executive teams.

There is now less fraud risk associated with adjustable-rate mortgage applications and this will offset some of the higher hazard associated with a purchase market.

Last year, Brett Buras and a partner scored big on a flip. They bought a house in Belleair Bluffs for $185,000, spent another $70,000 or so on renovations and sold it for $359,000 — a net profit of $104,000.

Mortgage industry hiring and new job appointments for the week ending March 30.

Heads of a large real estate investment company with offices in Alaska and California have agreed to pay $3 million in fines for what a federal agency says was a scheme to "bilk" hundreds of investors out of millions of dollars.

There is an oncoming liquidity crisis that will force consolidation in the mortgage industry as margins tighten and funding sources dry up.

Despite soaring home prices, other factors needed to inflate a housing bubble are absent from the real estate market. But experts warn falling home values and rising mortgage defaults are inevitable, even if conditions naturally cool off.

Servicers are still trying to figure out how they can best take advantage of the growing use of electronic notes and other digital mortgage tools by lenders and the secondary market.

Banks would welcome a proposal to loosen Basel III capital restrictions because it would make holding mortgage servicing rights easier and stem the recent exodus of depositories from the servicing business, executives said.