Servicing

Old Republic International Corp. has taken the next step in separating out its private mortgage insurance and consumer credit indemnity insurance units by selling 20.6% of Republic Financial Indemnity Group to an investor group headed by ORI president Christopher Nard.

Political races bring on all sorts of silly comparisons so why not take a stab at asking this: who would produce a more profitable mortgage banking company: President Obama or Mitt Romney?

The National Association of Realtors reported that sales of existing homes rose 3.4% in April to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.62 million units.

Changing market dynamics are putting more stress and constraints on commercial real estate servicing, causing processors to reevaluate their business models and strategies, according to a panel at the Mortgage Bankers Association commercial mortgage servicing and technology show this week in Dallas.

According to Lender Processing Services’ ‘First Look’ report from its database of nearly 40 million mortgage loans, the month-over-month delinquency rate rose 0.4% in April, bringing the overall delinquency rate of loans 30 or more days past due (but not in foreclosure) to 7.12%.

Bank servicers are doing what they can to avoid depressing home prices, by focusing on reducing foreclosures rather than flooding the market with their backlog of properties.

Declines in the mortgage delinquency rates on all one-to-four unit residential loans outstanding during the first quarter add another layer of affirmation to previous data that suggest some level of market stabilization.

Residential Capital Corp. last week began mailing out letters to its 2.5 million mortgage customers informing them of the firm’s bankruptcy filing but also cautioning them about keeping their loans current.

A top reason why borrowers continue to be intimidated by the prospect of facing their lender-servicers is fear they will be taken advantage of.

The House of Representative late last week passed a defense authorization bill that includes an expansion of the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act to shield more military families from foreclosure while increasing penalties on lenders for compliance violations.