Servicing

A group of private label investors acting through the Dallas law firm of Talcott Franklin PC, said its members now represent ownership interests in about one-third of the $1.5 trillion PLS market.

The Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston earned $18.7 million in the second quarter, a major improvement compared to the same period last year when it lost $22.9 million.

Kondaur Capital Corp., an active investor in distressed and underperforming mortgages, is marketing a $79 million mortgage-backed security that is collateralized by $263 million of NPL loans.

Lewis Ranieri, the co-inventor of the mortgage backed security, believes the yield on the 10-year Treasury could fall to as low as 2.5% this year.

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."

Equator is an infrastructure Software as a Service provider based in Los Angeles. Currently, the company has 60 servicers on its technology platform, including seven of the top 10.

Regulatory changes continue to be what largely drives automation for those on the production side, especially when it comes to the documentation necessary, according to executives at DocMagic Inc., Carson, Calif., which does business as Document Systems Inc.

The StoneHill Group Inc. is seeing a downtick in errors under the new RESPA rules although the company still has some clients who are struggling with the total implementation of these regulations, which have been in effect since the beginning of January.

The Atlanta-based quality control provider has helped lenders who suffered procedural problems go back and implement changes in the way they process information for proper disclosure with the Good Faith Estimate.

"That has been a help as we begin to audit these loans and report the findings to our clients," said Doug Parker, quality assurance manager.

Two years ago when the housing market looked bleak, it was thought that the road to riches in mortgage banking could be found in creating a firm that specialized in servicing (or subservicing) problem loans. The logic was simple: with $2 trillion in home mortgages expected to go south someone would have to service all that junk.

House prices rose 0.5% in May following a 0.9% jump in April, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency house price index, which has posted price increases over the past four consecutive months.

The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association wants an explicit guarantee and preservation of the to-be-announced MBS market as part of any restructuring of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.