Servicing

A House Financial Services panel on Tuesday approved a bill requiring the Federal Housing Administration to submit a plan to Congress on how it will avoid a bailout of its financially strapped mortgage insurance fund.

Bank of America is out in the marketplace with a roughly $35 billion portfolio of residential mortgage servicing rights through Phoenix Capital, Denver, according to investors and investment bankers who have been briefed on the sale.

With delinquencies continuing to be a problem throughout the country, investment firms continue to take advantage of these current opportunities in buying nonperforming assets from financial institutions.

The greatest fear for small- to medium-sized nonbanks is that Wells Fargo—the "big kahuna" of mortgage finance—will exit the correspondent lending space. And what a fear it is: in the most recent quarter in which there are final numbers, Wells bought a stunning $41 billion of loans from others, giving it a market share of 30% in the channel.

Moments before he was scheduled to make a statement on the mortgage servicing settlement Tuesday night, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman postponed the conference call indefinitely.

The classic 1895 science fiction novel The Time Machine by H.G. Wells allowed travel to the past and future. According to the most recent Case-Shiller study, home prices have now 'traveled' back to 2003 levels. This represents a 3.7% drop in overall prices since November 2011.

Mortgage servicers continue to modify 25,000 loans a month under the government's HAMP program, but that pace could pick up later this summer as new changes to the effort kick in.

PHH Corp. reported a GAAP profit of $13 million in the fourth quarter, but posted a GAAP loss of $127 million for the full year. Its core earnings, a measurement which among other things removes changes in the fair value of derivatives related to mortgage servicing rights, was $55 million for the quarter. For the full year, the company said using the core earnings measure, it had a profit of $182 million.

Yes, thousands of consumers have been wronged by residential servicers that cut corners on their foreclosure paperwork and decided to 'robo' away their workload. But does a consumer who was in arrears deserve to get his house back? It's a question the general media has yet to ask and at the same time it's a difficult question.

DocX and its founder Lorraine Brown have been indicted by a grand jury in Boone County, Mo. for alleged forgery of mortgage documents used to evict distressed borrowers from their homes.