Servicing

Canadian covered bonds now benefit from increased disclosure about the mortgages behind them and more certainty about recourse to the cover pool in the event of a default. But so far, this broader appeal hasn't resulted in increased issuance.

Institutional investors have bought as many as 200,000 U.S. properties in the last two years, taking advantage of real estate prices that fell as much as a third from the 2006 peak, and rising demand for rentals among Americans who lost their houses in the foreclosure crisis.

Fannie Mae is offering one of its periodic incentives for consumers to purchase foreclosed homes before they become available to investors.

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan says it's important for investors in mortgage-backed securities to receive a fair price for seized mortgages.

Scheduled home auctions rose last month from a year earlier in 27 states, bucking a decline in foreclosure filings across the U.S., RealtyTrac said.

The single-family mortgage delinquency rate has been declining for eight straight quarters and it ended 2013 at the lowest level since 2008.

New York's banking regulator unleashed a verbal assault on nonbank servicer Ocwen Financial Wednesday, saying the company's claims about tech-driven efficiencies are "too good to be true."

Centralized databases inside the loan origination system provide an efficient way to comply with the Qualified Mortgage requirements and more efficiently use loan information from origination to servicing and securitization.

Too much capacity and the cost of compliance will have other mortgage originators and servicers looking for buyers.

An ad campaign begun by the Federal Housing Finance Agency may come too late to boost refinancings by underwater borrowers with loans owned by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.