Servicing

As the megabanks continue to write down the value of their residential servicing portfolios, now may be the best time ever to buy housing receivables, according to a new report from Mortgage Industry Advisory Corp., New York.

The chief congressional proponent of the risk retention rule says federal regulators have gone too high in setting a 20% downpayment requirement on single-family loans that meet the "qualified residential mortgage" test.

Foreclosure filing activity decreased over the past three months by 15% from the last quarter in 2010 and 27% lower than the first quarter of last year, according to the latest RealtyTrac foreclosure market report.

Interest rates for the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rose by four basis points on average for the week ended April 14, making it four weeks in a row of increases, according to Freddie Mac.

A rising interest rate scenario could lead bank mortgage lenders back to the securitization markets, a paper from Fitch Research hypothesizes. The combination of rising rates and slowing prepayments might expose liability-sensitive banks to repricing risks and net interest margin compression.

MountainView Capital Holdings, Denver, on Thursday announced the hiring of Robert Wellerstein as a managing director in the firm's mortgage and fixed income sales and trading units.

An enforcement action against a bank is almost always bad news for the institution involved. But a federal bank regulators' order released Wednesday against the top 14 mortgage servicers was likely to help, not hurt, the banks, providing them with added leverage as they attempt to negotiate a separate settlement with the 50 state attorneys general and several federal agencies.

The banking consent agreements signed by some of the nation's largest residential servicers on Wednesday require the firms to stop the practice of "dual tracking" where at risk homeowners start the loan modification process but also are officially put into a parallel foreclosure pipeline.

Federal banking regulators Wednesday afternoon dropped their regulatory "bomb" on the nation's largest residential servicers — and two of their top outside vendors — accusing the firms of a "pattern of negligence and misconduct" tied to the processing of loans.

The law firm Akerman Senterfitt was victorious in a recent Florida court case ruling which stated that builders and installers cannot be held liable for negligence for installing faulty Chinese drywall during home construction if they did not have actual or implied notice of a defect in the drywall when the repairs took place.