Servicing

The apartment sector is projected to lead the housing market on the road to recovery, but growth in the multifamily sector will be highly uneven, industry experts said last week in Orlando.

Larry Fink, chairman and CEO of BlackRock Financial, is nobody's fool - not by a long shot. He cut his teeth at First Boston many moons ago, helped shape the MBS market, and then went on to create a financial services powerhouse: BlackRock

MountainView Servicing Group, Denver, is auctioning off a $305 million package of Fannie Mae servicing rights for an undisclosed seller.

If the GSEs initiated a principal reduction program similar to the one outlined in the robo-signing settlement, roughly 650,000 borrowers could benefit, distressed sales would level off, and home values would “stabilize,” according to Moody's Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi.

Although better multifamily performance numbers have been improving CMBS delinquencies overall, office and retail loans are setting record highs, with the latter surpassing the former for the first time in almost five years.

Break out the bubbly! The Bureau of Labor Statistics has reported that the unemployment rate in the U.S. dropped from 8.5% to 8.3%. According to BLS numbers, U.S. non-farm payrolls grew by 243,000 jobs in January, up from a revised 203,000 jobs in December 2011.

Will Clint Eastwood walk through the streets of Minneapolis, proclaiming how the U.S. mortgage industry is back? If you're not sure what I'm talking about, go see last weekend's Chrysler/Fiat commercial during the Super Bowl. (As an aside, I think the whole political take on that commercial has been blown way out of proportion.)

After six straight years of bad news, a panel of economists offered a more upbeat picture of the U.S. housing market during congressional testimony Thursday.

In addition to the national mortgage servicing settlement, Nevada has reached a side deal with Bank of America, state Attorney General Catherine Masto announced late Thursday.

The $25 billion 'robo-signing' settlement with the five mega-servicers includes a new set of servicing standards - and a mortgagor's ‘Bill of Rights' - to prevent future processing and foreclosure abuses.