Servicing

With the mortgage industry almost finishing its fourth consecutive year of being in a housing crisis with no end in near sight, asset management companies have to be more creative in finding ways to help their clients maximize returns for their distressed assets.

The National Credit Union Administration this week proposed a handful of regulatory measures, including new rules on participations that would require residential originators to retain some of the loans they participate out.

A Florida court ruling could make it harder for mortgage servicers to use computer records as evidence for foreclosure without verifying the underlying information.

A top Republican on the House Financial Services Committee said Tuesday she is disappointed that the GOP has not been able to fix Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac since taking control of the House in January.

Subjective thinking still is playing catch-up with the objective need for mortgage servicing process automation, pushing service providers to expand paper-to-paperless offerings.

It takes mortgage servicers 30% longer to complete a foreclosure in Orange County, Calif., than it did a year ago, according to new figures compiled by ForeclosureRadar.com.

The government and the mortgage banking industry may need to revisit how they are dealing with third-party service providers. New government regulations focus on banks, not the mortgage servicing community as a whole, says Denis Brosnan, CEO of Atlanta-based Prommis Solutions, and that approach is particularly obvious at the annual Mortgage Bankers Association gatherings.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should bundle at least 200 REO properties in a given metropolitan area into one pool to attract bids by large investors that are willing to rent out single-family homes for at least three years, according to Laurie Goodman of Amherst Securities Group.

Raj Date, the de facto head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, said Tuesday that misaligned incentives led to some of the major problems in mortgage servicing and still persist.

The chief author of the Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Act took exception to what he called "the revolt against risk retention," saying requiring originators to hold 5% of the loan amount on their books is "one of the central things we did in the bill."