Servicing

The Department of Housing and Urban Development is looking at warehouse lending to see if such transactions are legitimate secondary market transactions under the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act.

Home Affordable Modification Program activity continued to lose momentum in October as the number of homeowners granted permanent modifications and the number of candidates entering the three-month payment trials declined.

Credit Suisse expects to see Ginnie Mae mortgage-backed securities prepayment speeds rise 10% to 15% during the November period, according to a recent report.

On the surface, the three homes appear to have just one thing in common: foreclosure.One was purchased for $1.4 million in Plymouth, Mich., a city that sometimes appears on Money magazine's list of the best places to live. Another, bought for $290,000, is in Paterson, N.J., in a neighborhood where the poverty rate runs twice the national average. A third seized home, once valued at $929,000, is on the outskirts of Oxnard, a Southern California coastal town that fades into farmland.

Last week's Chapter 11 filing by Ambac Assurance, which provides insurance on billions of dollars of MBS held by corporate credit unions, is likely to add to the price tag of the federal bailout of these wholesale institutions.

If government support of the mortgage market is reduced – either gradually or immediately – and the private sector doesn't fill the void with investment capital, it could have dire consequences for housing and residential finance, according to a new analysis released by Redwood Trust.

At its Nov. 23 meeting next week, the Financial Stability Oversight Council is set to discuss the on-going foreclosure mess and whether it presents a systemic risk to the financial system, according to a Treasury Department official.

The mortgage services division of IBM has taken control of roughly $47 billion in servicing rights from JPMorgan Chase and eventually may increase its contract with the megabank to $100 billion, industry officials close to the deal confirmed to National Mortgage News.

An updated CoreLogic Mortgage Fraud Trends Report finds that while overall mortgage fraud has increased by 20% since fraud hit its lowest level in 2009, refinance fraud saw an even higher increase of 30%.

HUD is forecasting that the Federal Housing Administration will endorse $288.7 billion of single-family loans in fiscal year 2011, a 9.4% decline from FY 2010, which ended September 30.