Loss mitigation

Widows, divorcees and others who inherit or otherwise receive mortgaged property often have a hard time getting loans modified because there are too many hurdles to proving they own the property.

The government agency that guarantees securitizations of Federal Housing Administration-insured loans is experimenting with a pool type that consists only of modifications and reperforming loans.

Military families and service members are submitting debt collection complaints to the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau at twice the rate of other consumers.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency appears poised finally to allow principal reductions, but it's been nearly a decade since the mortgage crisis and underwater borrowers are much fewer thanks to higher home values.

The agency may finally be reaching resolution on whether Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will allow principal reductions, two years into Director Mel Watt's tenure as agency director and nearly a decade after the mortgage bubble burst.

As servicers downsize their loss mitigation units, housing counselors are finding the companies' designated points of contact are less experienced, making it more difficult to get packages approved for troubled borrowers.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac gave $186 million to the National Housing Trust Fund, their first such contributions to a fund designed to provide construction and rehabilitation of rental housing for low-income families.

Zais Financial may shut down its business and liquidate its holdings if it can't a buyer or a merger partner.

Servicers are taking a much-needed hard look at the full range of customer touch-points that they operate, and NMN's 10th annual Mortgage Servicing Conference promises to offer an engaging agenda of hottest trends and topics.

The mortgage industry provided about 420,000 loan modifications last year to homeowners struggling to make payments, according to Hope Now.

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.

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.

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?

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.