Servicing

Tuesday's elections handed the Republicans control of the House of Representatives — and therefore the Financial Services Committee — which means GSE reform moves to the top of their agenda.

Mortgage application volume fell 5% last week on a seasonally adjusted basis, as refinance applications showed a decline for the third straight week, according to new figures released by the Mortgage Bankers Association.

What Trepp LLC calls the first decline in commercial mortgage-backed securities delinquencies in over a year suggests that the industry is in a “choppy” market where there is no specific improvement in fundamentals market-wide but some select trophy loan resolutions are moving forward.

September foreclosure resales—homes that had been foreclosed on in the prior 12 months—slipped to 51.1% of the Las Vegas resale market, down from 52.5% in August and down from 67.1% a year earlier.

Freddie Mac recovered $1.7 billion from its seller/servicers in the third quarter, taking in cash or getting bad loans off its books because firms that sold mortgages to the GSE bought them back.

Flagstar Bank has closed its $400 million public offering, which included nearly 116 million shares of common stock priced at $1 per share. At the same time, the company said it is selling $474 million of non-performing first mortgage loans at a loss.

PHH Mortgage says its servicing department never used so called "robo-signers" to process foreclosures, as some of its rivals did.

The number of vacant homes for sale declined 2.4% in the third quarter from the same period a year ago, according to the Census Bureau, but the housing market still suffers from a glut of 1.93 million vacant homes, which is exerting downward pressure on values.

It is not a question of when or how. There is an immediate need for dialogue to occur between lenders and Realtors in order to improve the short sale process and close more successful transactions.

With the rising foreclosure numbers being a major issue in the market right now, Paladin Strategic Partners is responding to the problem by providing socially responsible solutions.