State AGs Hold Firm on Servicer Monitoring

State attorneys general are not going to take a back seat to the Treasury Department's Hope Now initiative when it comes to working with and monitoring the top 10 subprime servicers and their loan modification activities, despite the suggestions of one mortgage industry group."We think the Hope Now initiative and our initiative are very complementary," Iowa AG Tom Miller said. It is important to have people at the local as well as the federal level involved in the monitoring, he added. In a letter to the Iowa AG, the Consumer Mortgage Coalition said the Treasury is putting together a coordinated effort to prevent foreclosures and that requiring servicers to work with two initiatives will make them less effective. "We believe that by concentrating our efforts in the Hope Now Alliance, we will be able to maximize the benefit for the citizens of your state," CMC executive director Anne Canfield says in the letter. Mr. Miller told MortgageWire that the top 10 servicers have agreed to work closely with a group of state AGs and banking regulators. "None of them have indicated they are not going to honor their commitment," he said.