Servicing

As mortgage rates continue to be at all-time lows, the present day is a better time than ever before for a prospective homebuyer to purchase any type of property.

The foreclosure crisis is loosening the traditionally strong tie homeowners have with their homes. New findings from FICO's latest quarterly survey of bank risk professionals indicate one way the slow recovery will affect distressed homeowners in 2012 is increased propensity for "strategic default."

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's latest mortgage servicing proposals have the residential lending industry seeing dollar signs -- and not the good kind.

With over a million borrowers delinquent on their mortgages and nearly two million properties in the foreclosure pre-sale inventory, analysts, Realtors and servicers can only speculate about when the housing industry will take positive steps towards a recovery.

Resource Real Estate Opportunity REIT has purchased a distressed multifamily REO property in Houston that was experiencing operational and capital deficiencies for $11.4 million.

Alloya Corporate Federal Credit Union of Warrenville, Ill., the survivor of what was once Members United Corporate FCU, said it has signed a letter of intent to combine with Central Corporate Credit Union of Michigan, creating the nation's largest corporate with almost $5 billion in assets.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau detailed a slew of new mortgage servicing rules last week that it plans to propose this summer, including a call for expanded disclosures for payments and fees and new policies in how banks must handle customer accounts.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is about to take another step forward in its efforts to write a series of rules to define "larger participants" in specific markets, including those in the consumer credit reporting business.

Following an undercover investigation that found "disturbing evidence" of discrimination in the management of real estate owned properties in communities of color by a number of undisclosed banks the National Fair Housing Alliance has filed a federal housing discrimination complaint against Wells Fargo & Co. and Wells Fargo Bank, N.A.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency has conceded that the higher incentive payments the Treasury Department is willing to pay make principal reduction cost effective for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.