Loss mitigation

Freddie Mac has released a new Web tool aimed at servicers.

The Treasury Department will invest an additional $2 billion from the Troubled Asset Relief Program into a federal fund that seeks to protect homeowners from foreclosure.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development will provide $40 million in grant money to organizations that provide counseling to prospective homebuyers.

Mortgage servicers are actively discussing with regulators how current rules could be streamlined, and future rules could be shaped, to minimize costs and hassles.

Fannie and Freddie have been selling pools of delinquent mortgages at auction to the highest bidders. Community groups say the Federal Housing Finance Agency should be giving preferential treatment to nonprofits and community development financial institutions.

Fannie Mae has released the list of winners from its fourth nonperforming loan sale, which included a Goldman Sachs subsidiary.

After years of refi-fueled origination volume, lenders have their hopes pegged to a resurgent purchase market in 2016 and beyond. But it raises an important question: will strategic default rear its head again in the next downturn?

The rate of home price recovery during the seven years that a foreclosure remains on a consumer's credit report is one measure of whether borrowers who strategically defaulted made the right choice by walking away. But the results vary, depending on when, where and in what price tier that borrowers defaulted.

Borrowers who walked away from underwater mortgages are coming back to the market. Some lenders are ready to give them a second chance.

Key Democratic lawmakers are urging the Department of Housing and Urban Development to tighten its program for selling nonperforming guaranteed loans to ensure servicers have exhausted all loss mitigation options before the loans are sold to private investors.