Servicing

Borrowers who walked away from underwater mortgages are coming back to the market. Some lenders are ready to give them a second chance.

After years of refi-fueled origination volume, lenders have their hopes pegged to a resurgent purchase market in 2016 and beyond. But it raises an important question: will strategic default rear its head again in the next downturn?

Chronos Solutions in Coppell, Texas, has acquired Commerce Title & Closing Services.

Opus Capital Markets Consultants, a unit of Wipro, has created a division for identifying operational and loan-level risks within a residential mortgage servicing operation.

Freddie Mac has taken out another reinsurance policy that transfers risk of default on mortgages it insures.

Wells Fargo & Co., the largest U.S. home lender, agreed to pay $1.2 billion to resolve claims related to its Federal Housing Administration mortgage practices.

The delinquency rate on commercial mortgage-backed securities dropped sharply in January, thanks to the resolution of New York's Stuyvesant Town loan, according to Trepp.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac unveiled an appeals process Tuesday that will allow an independent arbitrator to resolve disputes between lenders and the government-sponsored enterprises over loan repurchase demands.

Key Democratic lawmakers are urging the Department of Housing and Urban Development to tighten its program for selling nonperforming guaranteed loans to ensure servicers have exhausted all loss mitigation options before the loans are sold to private investors.

While most federal banking regulators use enforcement actions as a way to shape industry practices, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is taking that to a whole other level, frequently using orders as a substitute for new rules or guidelines.