Servicing

Almost 26% of consumers have FICO scores below 600, an increase from the past two years and a reading that indicates it could be next to impossible for these borrowers to get a new mortgage.

The mortgage insurance unit of Genworth Financial lost $40 million in the second quarter, a marked improvement from the same period last year when it spilled $134 million of red ink.

A high ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee wants to explore ways of recouping the cost of placing the government-sponsored enterprises into conservatorships.

The Conference of State Bank Supervisors is endorsing legislation that could help restart the securitization market for small commercial mortgages held by community banks.

Capstead Mortgage Corp., an MBS-investing REIT, saw its second quarter earnings fall 59% in the second quarter to $29.8 million, citing "sharply higher portfolio runoff" caused by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buyouts.

The PMI Group's second quarter loss of $150.6 million, while improved over the same period in 2009, was still a surprise as analysts predicted the company should be able to pare those losses further. The company had a $222 million loss one year ago.

Of the 1.3 million inspections field service vendor Safeguard Properties conducts monthly on a nationwide basis, between 20%-28% of presale properties become vacant before they are even referred to foreclosure."The borrower, for some reason or another, just decides they are out," said Robert Klein, chairman of the board and founder of Safeguard Properties, during the Mitigation REO Losses panel at the SourceMedia Second Annual Best Practices in Loss Mitigation Conference in Dallas.

Every servicer and lender has an in-house servicing platform that measures major compliance milestones. But in today's environment that's not enough to tackle the ever-changing legislation that is constantly coming their way, according to Chris Saitta, president of Equator."It's really that granularity of the day-to-day decisions and day-to-day process bifurcated by which portfolio the property is in and which investor and which [mortgage insurance] company. It's a very complex decision process so you need a technology that can get into the granularity of automation."

Fraudsters in today's mortgage market are "quite entrepreneurial," coming up with new ways to scheme against borrowers, according to speakers at the SourceMedia Second Annual Best Practices in Loss Mitigation Conference in Dallas.The beginning of foreclosure rescue fraud starts typically when a servicer publishes a public notice concerning the homeowner. In a modification scheme, they offer a "modification for money and they never deliver."

Roughly 22% of consumers who refinanced their first liens in the second quarter also used the opportunity to pay down their mortgage, according to new figures released by Freddie Mac.