Servicing

Administration officials are trying to get the Federal Housing Finance Agency to reconsider its resistance to principal reductions on loans purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told lawmakers Wednesday.

Any insight into the future of the mortgage industry given by the speakers at the Regional Conference of Mortgage Bankers Associations in Atlantic City was hazy at best. Because almost every speaker at the first morning's general session agreed that if there is any one word defining what it is happening in the business right now it is uncertainty.

Mortgage bank scorecards are changing an industry that has not yet found the right balance between efficient rating standards and regulated oversight.

No matter how one looks at the current residential shadow inventory data it does not indicate improvement, even though the overall numbers remained flat at 1.6 million units as of January 2012, according to CoreLogic.

The total mortgage loan delinquency rate is 7.57% for February, down 5% from January's 7.97% and nearly 14% from February 2011, according to Lender Processing Services' "first look" at its monthly default data.

The acquisition of Bellwether Real Estate Capital LLC, Cleveland, by Enterprise Community Investment Inc., Columbia, Md., will allow the latter company to expand its activities to be a full service lender for community development activities, the executive who will head up the combination told National Mortgage News.

With Bank of America methodically dismantling the Countrywide home loan machine, someone else is going to have to service all the loans it used to buy. Who'll it be?

Mortgage servicing industry executives have all been voicing their opinions recently about whether the REO-to-rental strategy initiated by the Federal Housing Finance Agency will help spur any type of housing recovery. Many have supported this initiative because renting properties is in greater demand now since many buyers are skeptical about the economy.

A listing agent gets assigned a bank-owned listing in a great neighborhood. A week or two passes while the bank's asset manager determines a list price. Meanwhile, the listing agent fields telephone calls from prospective purchasers and other agents.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac finally gave lenders the green light on Monday that their automated underwriting systems are ready to process HARP 2.0 loans.