What We're Hearing

There's been sporadic press coverage of the non-performing loan auction market and it's hard making heads or tails of what's really going on, but one veteran of the business insists that not many mortgage portfolios are actually changing hands. Reason: banks are still reluctant to sell at discounts of 50% or more. Buyers are telling sellers: take it or leave it and so far it appears the sellers are leaving it be -- for now. Our source noted that one NPL investor that's received wide press coverage "has only a few Indians reporting to many chiefs" which translates into the strong possibility that this investing company (who I'm now looking into) is burning through plenty of cash. We're told that one of the keys to buying NPLs is servicing. If an NPL buyer has an in-house servicing platform it is ahead of the game. If not, it will need to outsource the function which means quality control may not be as good…