Servicing

The CoreLogic Home Price Index for May increased 0.8% over April but declined by 7.4% when compared with May 2010. Take out distressed sales, and year-over-year prices declined by a mere 0.4% when compared with May 2010. That follows a 0.8% year-over-year decline when distressed sales were removed from the equation for April.

Arthur J. Gallagher & Co., an insurance brokerage based in Itasca, Ill., has bought Mortgage Insurance Agency Inc., Crystal Lake, Ill., a provider of surety bonds, errors & omissions coverage and fidelity bonds for mortgage brokers and mortgage bankers nationwide. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

New notices of default at the nation's private mortgage insurers far outpaced cures in May, ending a run of three months where the opposite was the case, according to the latest data from the Mortgage Insurance Cos. of America.

An ill-fated $300 billion program Congress approved in 2008 to refinance delinquent underwater borrowers into Federal Housing Administration loans will expire September 30 – after providing relief to less than 600 borrowers.

Two years into the Home Affordable Modification Program, it appears the number of borrowers able to qualify for HAMP mods has leveled off while candidates for proprietary modifications surged in the first quarter.

May home sales in Massachusetts dropped more than 25% from the prior year but median prices increased after five months of decreases, according to The Warren Group.

Servicers for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will redo the foreclosure process on 1,250 real estate owned properties in Michigan, the result of an appeals court ruling in April that deemed Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems Inc. ineligible to use the state’s nonjudicial foreclosure process.

The Independent Community Bankers of America is very wary about new servicing requirements and servicing compensation structures being discussed that according to them could harm the servicing operations of community banks.

There are approximately 4.1 million loans nationwide that are 90 days delinquent or in foreclosure, according to Lender Processing Services’ May Mortgage Monitor report.

Ally Financial Inc. indicated in a Wednesday SEC filing that it has received subpoenas from two regulatory entities in June that included requests for documentation related to certain mortgage activities.