Servicing

Does anyone in government feel sorry enough for jumbo borrowers that they would design a HARP program to help these (presumably) high net worth individuals take advantage of a 3.5% fixed-rate mortgage?

Mortgage applications increased by almost 4% for the week ending May 18—thanks to surging refinancings—according to new figures compiled by the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Home prices hit bottom in the first quarter, but will remain flat for the rest of this year and into next, according to a new forecast from Bank of America/Merrill Lynch.

Iron Horse Auction Company is conducting an online auction through next weekend selling 100 bank-owned properties in North Carolina and Virginia to investors and prospective homebuyers.

Banks are doing what they can to avoid depressing home prices, by focusing on reducing foreclosures rather than flooding the market with their backlog of properties, according to CoreLogic chief economist Mark Fleming.

Citigroup, a somewhat frequent seller of nonperforming loans, is in the market with a $99 million package of troubled residential mortgages, according to investors that have looked at the package.

Umpqua Holdings in Portland, Ore., continues to ramp up in commercial real estate lending at a time when many other banks are shying away from the sector.

The Home Affordable Refinancing Program is not giving perks to the right borrower.

The days of mortgage companies embarking on large, expensive and open-ended information technology projects are long gone and executives are focusing their efforts on smaller-scale projects that produce faster results, according to a panel at the Mortgage Bankers Association Commercial/Multifamily Servicing and Technology Conference this week in Dallas.

Encore Capital Group, a business that buys portfolios of consumer debt, announced that it purchased tax refinancer Propel Financial Services this month for $187 million.