Servicing

It's undeniable that small business is the growth engine of the economy that also helps stimulate the housing market recovery. Many of the third-party service providers, such as special servicers and foreclosure counseling agencies are small size business companies.

Management at Ally Financial Corp. is considering throwing part of its mortgage division into bankruptcy and then executing a sale of most of its "good" assets, investment banking sources said late Thursday.

The Lawyers' Committee and counsel Davis Polk & Wardwell filed a lawsuit this week in New York Supreme Court in Nassau County on behalf of 18 homeowners claiming that a network of for-profit loan modification companies conducted a scam on them.

California is taking aim at the prices banks and insurers charge for force-placed home insurance, the state announced on Wednesday.

Even though national foreclosure filings decreased in February, 21 states posted annual increases in foreclosure activity, according to new figures compiled by RealtyTrac.

The inaugural Zillow Rent Index shows "a healthy and growing rental market" across most of the country, even as home values continue to fall. And according to Zillow's chief economist Stan Humphries, rents are not rising at the expense of home values. "The opposite is true."

Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and three other residential servicers agreed to pay $25 million to New York State to resolve certain monetary claims over the use of the MERS database after reaching a $25 billion national settlement on robo-signing charges.

Remember the good old days when mortgage bankers were considered the "good guys," the ones who put people in houses? And remember when it appeared that plenty of outside capital was itching to get into this industry?

The Obama administration's latest "housing scorecard" suggests there is some progress when it comes to servicers' ability to fulfill the aims of regulatory programs that encourage mortgage rehabilitation, according to one expert.

The size of the residential loan market over the short-term will be determined by the definition of 'qualified mortgage,' which is more important to the industry than the definition of 'qualified residential mortgage,' declared a top lending executive for BB&T speaking at the Regional Conference of the Mortgage Bankers Association in Atlantic City.