Servicing

Mom-and-pop lodging options are popular among vacationers on a budget. And a novel type of short-term rentals adds vacant foreclosures to a traveler’s list of inexpensive options if REO managers are willing to embrace new ideas.

Borrowers, including first-time homebuyers, scattered across the country are surfing the Web to find deals on the latest foreclosed properties.

PNC Financial Services Group, the nation's ninth largest residential servicer, said it plans to resume foreclosures with "enhanced procedures."

When banks buy insurance on the homes of borrowers whose policies have lapsed, they get a great deal. Just not for the homeowners and investors who have to pay for it.

Now that the government's HAMP program has adopted a principal reduction option, the performance of loan modifications should improve "substantially," according to Laurie Goodman of the Amherst Securities Group.

Mergers and acquisitions are emerging as an effective way mortgage servicing technology providers streamline separate tools into larger more compatible systems.John Guzzo, managing director at BerkeryNoyes, a New York-based investment banker and a mergers and acquisitions expert, said due to the crisis private equity investors have been fairly quiet in the past two and a half years. But it has started to change as some “relatively restless investors” are becoming more active and opening new investing opportunities for mortgage technology vendors.

The affidavits’ scandal and increasing demand for foreclosure documentation reviews requires greater efficiency from servicers, subservicers and specialty servicers alike, despite their procedural differences.Duke Olrich, CEO of DRI, warns that working through the present crisis will not be possible without default management technology. “It’s not like the S&L crisis,” back in 1984 when he started DRI, the mortgage veteran says, because the much more complex tasks and “the sheer size of the current situation” overwhelm servicing staff to the point that workflow automation becomes indispensable.

Changing economic conditions, their effect on consumer behavior and related shifts in credit risk are driving efforts to provide credit scoring models with a more predictive risk assessment edge.VantageScore Solutions, Stamford, Conn., is one such provider that redeveloped its credit-scoring algorithm.Sarah Davies, SVP of product management, analytics and research, told this publication VantageScore 2.0 is based on over 45 million data files and expands credit rating analysis beyond the typical two-year period dataset to a three-year window. Changes are expected to increase the score’s predictive power from 10% to about 15%.

Amherst Securities is advising investors to be overweight on MBS, telling them that prepayment speeds are not really a factor – despite ultra low mortgage rates.

The White House wants the Federal Housing Administration to enter the business of co-insuring small loans to finance energy-saving home improvements.