Servicing

In only a few years mandatory homeownership counseling before being approved for a loan modification or mortgage has become the new norm in mortgage origination and servicing. Starting this fall New Yorkers can add housing repair skills counseling and hands-on training to the list of things they may want to learn before or after deciding to own a house.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency knew as early as 2009 about potentially abusive foreclosure practices and yet failed to take action to curb them, according to a watchdog report released Tuesday.

TMS Funding, Milford, Conn., has added a 30-year fixed rate loan to its stable of jumbo products, and announced plans to crank up its hiring of wholesale account executives.

Efforts to negotiate a settlement between state attorneys general and the top five mortgage servicers collapsed late last week after California pulled out of the negotiations.

The Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago has received regulatory approval to finally convert to a capital structure that was mandated by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act back in 1999.

After several weeks of negotiations, Bank of America and Fortress Investments have ended talks over the bank selling its correspondent mortgage division to the publicly traded investment fund, officials close to the deal told National Mortgage News late Monday.

The delinquency rate on securitized multifamily loans jumped over 50 basis points from August to nearly 17% in September and it continues to be the worst performing property type in the commercial mortgage-backed securities market.

Home price problems, continued high unemployment numbers and loan seasoning are behind the slowing pace of the improvement in the current to delinquent roll rates for nonagency mortgage loans in the past few months, according to the analysts at Barclays Capital.

August home sales in Phoenix surged to the highest level in five years with a total of 9,657 properties closing, according to the San Diego-based real estate analytic company DataQuick.

There was $5.7 billion of primary new mortgage insurance written in August by the members of the Mortgage Insurance Cos. of America, marking four consecutive months of increased business.