Servicing

Nationstar, which recently sold stock to the public, is continuing negotiations to buy Residential Capital Corp./GMAC from Ally Financial through a prepackaged bankruptcy agreement.

Even though distressed sales and listings have been declining at a steady pace since late 2010, there is still a long road to recovery for the Florida housing market.

HARP 2.0 is hot – or so we keep hearing. Late last year the Treasury Department finally found the keys to the HARP kingdom: take the loan-to-value ratio girdle totally off the patient and see what happens.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency closed Security Bank in North Lauderdale, Fla., on Friday, bringing the total number of failures so far in 2012 to 23.

Las Vegas-area home sales rose in March to a level not seen in six years.

While bankers remain concerned about the activities of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, they should take some comfort from a recent suggestion by the agency's director, Richard Cordray, that the regulation of nonbank institutions is a top priority.

HSBC Bank USA said that it has inked a deal to transfer roughly $52 billion of residential servicing rights to PHH Corp., which also will absorb two-thirds of its mortgage work force.

A timeline Acting FHFA director Ed DeMarco provided to Congress in March targets September as the date for the first single-family risk-sharing deals. But the question boils down to this: What will Fannie and Freddie come up with and will it be profit-enticing enough for the private sector jump on board?

Vacant and deteriorated homes that are not being maintained properly continues to negatively affect the national housing market.

One has to be particularly careful to have the right mix of quality, technology and speed when it comes to managing valuations, contractor networks and FHA product in particular, according to three respective experts in these areas.