Compliance

Florida regulators are investigating the force-placed insurance industry, the state's insurance commissioner says.

Low-income community revitalization has always been one of the most challenging jobs in housing finance. Both investors and individual buyers are hard to come by these days when cost is an issue for sellers as much as it is for buyers.

Appraisers may have started to change their business practices one at a time probably only a few years ago, but their strategy shift and where they are headed already has started to become clear.

Valued Veterans, an appraisal management company, seeks to train military veterans as real estate appraisers.

Despite signs of a recovery and increased levels of real estate lending, devaluation is expected to lead to defaults at maturity for almost half of all securitized commercial loans monitored by Fitch Ratings.

Churchill Mortgage chief operating officer Matthew Clarke states “an investment in training is so important” for a mortgage lender and the Brentwood, Tenn.-based firm is putting its money where its mouth is.

A Florida jury convicted two defendants last week for running a foreclosure rescue scheme that took advantage of homeowners who had trouble making their monthly mortgage payments.

The Home Affordable Modification Program has long since left the spotlight. But data shows that after initially dragging their feet, the largest mortgage servicers have modified nearly 70% of loans to eligible borrowers largely because they are receiving major incentives from the government.

The financial health of state housing finance agencies is mixed, Fitch Ratings reported last week.

The nation’s largest residential servicers—which just so happen to be megabanks—are marking down their MSRs to near fire sale prices.

In Origination News’ discussion with the officers of the Florida Association of Mortgage Professionals at its annual convention in Tampa, national housing correspondent Lew Sichelman asked how the changes to federal law have impacted the state’s education requirements and how conditions are in the various markets that make up this very diverse state.

Lender Processing Services has reached a settlement with the Missouri attorney general, dismissing criminal charges that were pending against its now-defunct subsidiary DocX.

One of the biggest compliance and litigation risks for lenders involves the performance of branch managers.

On July 25, U.S. District Judge Paul G. Rosenblatt sentenced Clint Bryson Rogers of Scottsdale to five years in federal prison for his role in a mortgage fraud conspiracy. Rogers pleaded guilty on Jan. 18 to conspiracy to commit the crimes of false loan application, wire fraud and money laundering.

Lenders that shift to a retained servicing model must make significant modifications to their technology and processes.

CitiMortgage will be the second correspondent mortgage investor to use a technology and services offering from Ellie Mae that provides tamper-proof versions of borrower verification data on loans sold by correspondent lenders.

Mortgage refinancings once again drove banks' profits last quarter and, with interest rates at record lows, most industry experts expect the trend to continue at least through the end of the year.

A former Minnesota Vikings tight end has reached a settlement with federal regulators over his alleged misdeeds at a Minneapolis-area community bank.

Barclays Capital, Citigroup Global Markets, Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank Securities were among the winning bidders for the sale of roughly $4.5 billion of additional assets from the Maiden Lane III portfolio.

Servicers of securitized commercial mortgage loans beware of the still-elevated delinquency rates.