Servicing

While other regulatory, compliance and legal issues such as the new RESPA changes have been the focal point within the primary and secondary mortgage industry over the last year, one issue flying under the radar for many lenders is privacy and data security. Financial institutions are being forced to confront a host of actual and prospective new privacy requirements as a result of new regulations adopted on the federal and state level as well as pending privacy legislation in Congress.

Two private investors have teamed up to buy a roughly $1.2 billion pool of mostly non-performing residential whole loans offered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., investment banking officials and sources close to the deal confirmed to National Mortgage News.

Senate Democratic leaders have rounded up three Republican votes and are close to securing passage of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform bill.

Essent Guaranty, which wrote its first mortgage insurance policy in the second quarter, said it has lined up $100 million of fresh capital, bringing its total equity commitments to $600 million.

The Federal Housing Administration is giving states, cities and nonprofit housing groups participating in HUD's Neighborhood Stabilization Program first crack at bidding on its newly foreclosed properties before they are placed on the market.

Lenders took back an average of 4,000 properties per month during the first half of 2010 in the tri-county South Florida market, a pace that, if it continues, could see nearly 50,000 properties repossessed by year's end, according to a new report from consulting firm CondoVentures.

U.S. home prices rose 0.9% in May after a 1.3% monthly increase in April, according to the CoreLogic housing price index.

A group of investors is suing Fortuno, Inc., a Lodi, Calif.-based buyer of foreclosed homes and its outside marketing executives, alleging they illegally "enticed" the group to invest in the purchase and re-sale of REOs in Ohio and Michigan with the promise of high returns upon flipping the properties.

Credit unions must be definitive when making loan modifications or debt restructuring and have clear evidence to back up their decisions, according to state regulators.

The good and the bad often come in the same package, or so they say. And it may be true for licensed credit counselors who because of the crisis fit right into everyone's agenda and urgency to prevent foreclosures and curtail loan losses.