Servicing

Foreclosure activists rallied outside the San Francisco home of Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf recently, armed with life-size cardboard cutouts of him inscribed with the unflattering tagline, "Wall St. Robber Banker."

Federal Housing Administration single-family endorsements rose 9.5% in January from the prior month while the percentage of seriously delinquent government loans inched up to 9.8%.

There was nearly $5 billion in primary new insurance in January written by the members of the Mortgage Insurance Cos. of America, down from $5.8 billion in December.

Turning foreclosed properties into rentals on a mass scale will reduce "some of the fears that an avalanche of distressed properties" will rattle the housing market, according to a new report from Wells Fargo Securities.

While MERS QA is neither unreasonable nor unexpected, the challenges uncovered in the race to comply are significant. Never before has the industry asked servicers to ensure the data of originators.

Like carnival barkers at the county fair, mortgage brokers and realtors are urging underwater homeowners to hurry, hurry, hurry on their short-sale plans.

In the end, MetLife Inc. wasn't crazy about the residential finance business, but it had a darn good quarter origination wise, according to final survey figures the company provided to National Mortgage News.

When purchasing distressed properties across the country, buyers continue to be more interested in acquiring pre-foreclosed homes rather than bank-owned assets, according to the latest figures from RealtyTrac.

The Obama administration's plan to refinance underwater borrowers with private-label mortgages was supposed to be dead on arrival -- but it appears Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the Banking Committee, wants to hear more.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s quarterly bank earnings report shows bank mortgage portfolios increased 1.4%, to $1.88 trillion, at the end of the fourth quarter of 2011.