Servicing

For the past three months, the nation's largest residential servicers have had a lock on refinancing high LTV and underwater loans in their GSE portfolios. In a nutshell the megabanks could manually underwrite loans they controlled under Dec. 1 revisions made to the Home Affordable Refinancing Program.

New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman's efforts to carve $15 million out of the state's $132 million national mortgage servicing settlement fund to provide foreclosure prevention assistance to New Yorkers came to fruition only a few days shy of the fund's expiration date.

Banc of Manhattan Capital, Woodland Hills, Calif., is taking bids on a $26 million pool of re-performing whole loans, servicing released.

The average interest rate for a 30-year fixed rate loan fell to 3.99% for the week ending March 29, compared to 4.08% the week prior, according to new figures compiled by Freddie Mac.

The firm’s Mortgage Fraud Risk Report found that incidents of employment and income fraud increased 14% during 2011. This follows an upward trend seen over the last two years in which these fraud activities occurred 45% of the time.

The largest banks are charging relatively high interest rates to borrowers that qualify for a government refinance program, according to analysts, who say that the trend bodes well for mortgage profits in the second quarter.

Residential servicers completed 65,000 foreclosures in February, an 8% decline from the prior month and just about flat from the same period a year ago, according to new figures compiled by CoreLogic, Santa Ana, Calif.

Federal Reserve Board member Elizabeth Duke in a recent speech highlighted how the focus of government-assisted community development has shifted to preserving and disposing of existing housing from building new housing.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency will decide sometime in April whether the higher incentive fees the Treasury Department is paying are enough to justify allowing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to do principal reductions for the first time.

Bank servicers initiated more trial modification plans, and initiated fewer foreclosure actions in the fourth quarter than the previous one, according to a new report from the Comptroller of the Currency.