Servicing

ATLANTA—Mortgage originators are pushing back against push-backs.“The industry has to stand up and say, ‘Enough is enough,’” Ronald McCord of the First Mortgage Co. in Oklahoma City said during the opening session of the Mortgage Bankers Association's annual convention here last week. "We're going to have to bring this to a head."

Foreclosure-related problems could cost a quartet of U.S. banks $26 billion, according to a report published by analysts at Goldman Sachs, which noted that Bank of America will feel more than half of those losses.

Specialty servicer Ocwen Financial Corp., West Palm Beach, Fla., posted a third quarter loss of nearly $9 million due to $33.9 million of transaction-related charges tied to its purchase of HomEq, another specialty servicer.

Fitch Ratings on Thursday assigned a "Negative Outlook" to the entire U.S. residential servicing sector, citing concerns about "alleged procedural defects in the judicial foreclosure process."

Braver Stern Securities LLC, New York, named Peter D. Howard managing director and head trader of CDOs, CLOs and esoteric asset-backed securities.

Will the Federal Reserve's $600 billion worth of "quantitative easing" lead to yet another significant dip in mortgage rates? Probably not, but loan rates may continue to fall, at least slightly.

It appears unlikely that Freddie Mac will take a hard line on enforcing contracts with servicers that have identified foreclosure documentation defects in recent weeks — though it believes some of those contracts may have been violated.

WASHINGTON — With the GOP's sweeping victory in the mid-term elections, observers were already questioning the fate of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner in the new Congress.

Ally Financial Inc.'s chief executive said the company "screwed up on robo-signing affidavits," but has changed its foreclosure processes and will complete a review of about 25,000 affidavits by yearend.

The FDIC has finally unloaded $23 billion of mortgage servicing rights that once belonged to AmTrust Bank of Cleveland, but is saying little about the deal.