Servicing

Relatively favorable jobless claims and a rally in the stock market Thursday reversed the course of mortgage rates, causing them to bounce back from what Freddie Mac's latest weekly survey confirmed have been a record lows.

An Obama Administration official and a Seattle attorney squared off at the American Association of Residential Mortgage Regulators annual meeting in San Francisco, with one claiming that "dual track" servicing has all but ended but the other saying that's not the case, at least not in the Puget Sound area.

The warehouse commitment business is booming at People's United Bank of Connecticut which last fall hired industry veteran Paul Best from PNC Bank to run its operation.

Standard & Poor's this week placed thousands of publicly financed housing bonds with FHA guarantees on CreditWatch negative in response to its downgrade of the United States' long-term credit rating to AA+ from AAA.

Servicers believe that developing greater communication during the default resolution process is an integral aspect in order to reduce the number of foreclosures nationwide.

First the good news: the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury hit yet another new low Wednesday afternoon, but many mortgage-related stocks experienced losses ranging from 2% to 8% in a morning selloff.

Mortgage servicers slowed the pace of proprietary loan modifications in the second quarter while HAMP loan restructurings remained steady.

After two straight months of single-digit bank closures nationwide, there were 13 more banks that shut down in July, according to Trepp LLC.

Researchers at some firms were recommending overweighting agency MBS Wednesday morning, saying relative yield advantages and the likelihood of continued tight underwriting could outweigh negative convexity concerns as more market turbulence continued to drive rates lower.

Fitch late Tuesday downgraded its ratings on Republic Mortgage Insurance and then withdrew entirely its coverage of the firm, saying its business likely will enter run-off status in the near future.