Mortgages

Facebook is about to go public. Whoopee! Here's how an IPO works: all the private equity firms that have been funding a startup's operations get to cash out, recovering their seed money and then some. I'm not a Facebook user, but I get the model, though my doubts about the company stem from this basic belief: what's to prevent a bunch of low-cost competitors from offering the same service?

Have you ever had a situation where a friend, neighbor or family member got their mortgage from another lender? They like and respect you, but someone else asked for their business and got it. Sometimes we don't take the vital step of asking, simply because we can't think of an appropriate way to phrase the question.

When Bank of America and Wells Fargo exited the reverse lending space last year there were concerns that liquidity might dry up, but don't tell that to the sector's "survivors" who are now feasting on all the market share the two banking giants ceded.

Field Asset Services believes that property preservation companies will have a greater workload this year in order to try to prevent more foreclosures from taking place nationwide.

The National Credit Union Administration is proposing new rules for troubled debt restructurings that will cover how all federally insured credit unions account for delinquencies, charge-offs, and income related to troubled home mortgages.

Bank of America is ready to unload yet another multi-billion package of mortgage servicing rights, according to bidders and industry advisors familiar with the bank's plans.

The long-running negotiations on a settlement between large mortgage servicers and the state attorneys general have been dragging on too long.

The Treasury Department late Friday unveiled a new plan to expand the Home Affordable Modification Program by increasing the incentive fees it pays investors -- including Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- for agreeing to reduce the principal amount of a mortgage.

The lending industry's troubles with a controversial type of insurance coverage appear to be spreading to new areas. In recent weeks New York State's Department of Financial Services has issued subpoenas to more than 20 mortgage servicers, a dozen insurers and 20 affiliated insurance agencies, according to someone familiar with the investigation.

I watched the State of the Union speech Tuesday and came away thinking no real "mortgage" surprises tonight except for two: Obama not using the word "mortgage broker" once, and the formation of the DOJ fraud task force on securitizing loans. But what about the "The State of the Mortgage Union"?

Many prominent names in the reverse mortgage business have left in the past year, for the most part scared away by issues associated with the servicing of these loans.

WASHINGTON -- The Federal Housing Administration is changing the way it monitors the loan performance of its largest lenders as part of a rule to clarify and codify its indemnification practices.

Investors considering nonperforming loan purchases are increasingly concerned about title chains and finding related concerns that need to be cleaned up, according to a new manager at one vendor in this business.

The serious delinquency rate on the Federal Housing Administration's $1 trillion single-family loan portfolio edged closer to 10% in December as the pace of originations slowed in the fourth quarter.

Raising guarantee fees on government-backed loans again would make a "bad situation worse," according to three industry groups that are lobbying elected officials to find new ways of funding a 10-month extension of the payroll tax holiday.

Compliance and documentation go together like education and success. And, the latter is even more determined today by finding the missing pieces in the transaction chain.

Dynex Capital Inc., a real estate investment trust that buys agency and non-agency, residential and commercial mortgage-backed securities, has priced its 12.5 million share common stock offering at $9.12 per share, for gross proceeds of $114 million.

Companies have increasingly become reliant on bonuses to provide a portion of compensation to employees. Unfortunately, the use (or misuse) of a "bonus" often creates problems for employers.

Fannie Mae's latest housing forecast is in, and it predicts a stagnant mortgage market for the next two years, at about $1 trillion in originations for each of 2012 and 2013. Not what industry officials want to hear, especially after five rocky years starting in 2007.

Residential mortgages originated over the past two years are "among the best quality originations" on record, according to a new report from Lender Processing Services.