Servicing

If households are ever to climb out of the financial hole created by the housing bust, stocks are going to have to do better.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency is urging a U.S. district court to block the city of Chicago from enforcing an ordinance that could increase the cost of maintaining foreclosed properties controlled by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The Inspector General's office of the Federal Housing Finance Agency is taking bids on a contract to evaluate mortgage servicing rights, according to a 'request for proposal' being circulated around the industry.

Earlier this month Freddie Mac released the results of its Primary Mortgage Market Survey revealing that interest rates are still at historic lows.

A hot legal issue known among insiders as the "City of Chicago ordinance" transfers the burden and costs of vacant property ownership from the mortgagee to the lender clashing with some county-level foreclosure process requirements.

House Republican leaders have included a hike in GSE guarantee fees in their bill to extend a payroll tax holiday that is similar to a Senate version, which means seller/servicers could be facing higher g-fees next year.

Federal regulators took another step last week toward lessening banks' reliance on credit ratings by proposing three methods for assessing risk on firms' trading books.

The drop over 3Q11 of commercial and multifamily loans is a credit positive for CMBS, according to Standard & Poor's in a note released Friday.

Radian Guaranty Inc.'s delinquent loan inventory declined by a scant 256 loans between October and November as new notices of defaults outpaced cures by nearly 1,800 loans.

Among the many hurdles any return of the private-label securitized market will likely have to overcome are conflict of interest measures in Section 619 of Dodd-Frank and the Volcker Rule, which as noted in a recent American Securitization Forum seminar, are hitting some key deadlines this month and next year.