Servicing

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.

State and local governments aren't the only ruling bodies feeling the impact of the housing meltdown. So are homeowner associations, the "mini" governments that ride herd over hundreds of thousands of communities from coast to coast.

Interactive Mortgage Advisors, Denver, is auctioning off a $186 million bulk package of Government National Mortgage Association servicing rights.

More than 90% of the nearly 49,000 condominium units built in South Florida since the real estate boom began in 2003 have been sold. But that still leaves about 4,700 units to go.

Fannie Mae recently told its seller/servicers that all mortgage insurance rescissions, cancellations and claim denials tied to loans it bought must be reported to the agency immediately.