Daily Dose

Counsel's Corner is an ongoing series in which DS News talks with default servicing attorneys around the country about the most pressing issues facing the default servicing industry. This installment features Brian Liebo of Minneapolis-based Usset, Weingarden & Liebo.

SW Sponsor, LLC, was the winning bidder for Pool No.1 , which included 710 loans with an aggregate UPB of $173.8 million; the winning bidder for Pool No. 2, which included 2,358 loans with an aggregate UPB of $587.9 million, was Neuberger Berman Fixed Income Funds’ affiliate PRMF Acquisition LLC.

According to the FHFA, the initial goal was to assist in building a Common Securitization Platform (CSP) and support the statutory obligation to ensure the liquidity of the nation’s housing finance markets issued by the FHFA. Taxpayers would also not have to suffer the cost of subsidizing Freddie Mac’s securitization of single-family mortgage loans with the Single Security.

Today, Freddie Mac receives about one tenth of the amount of calls it was receiving during the immediate aftermath of the housing crash (about 40,000 per month, or 1,300 per day), but many homeowners facing financial setbacks are still calling Freddie Mac hoping the GSE will have a solution for them, whether it allows them to keep their home or is of the non-home retention variety.

Visio found that 63 percent more investors are considering purchasing properties over $200,000, while sub-$40,000 deal interest has decreased, compared with last year’s report. Investors are also seeking to enhance their investment return strategy by fixing and flipping homes and building their rental portfolios.

The number of individuals who had a foreclosure notation added to their credit reports in Q1 was 112,000, the lowest total since 1999, while the number of consumers who had bankruptcies added to their credit reports dropped by 4 percent from Q4 to Q1 down to the lowest point since 2006.

One of the witnesses at the hearing, Dean and Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law Paul G. Mahoney, said a consequence of Dodd-Frank will be fewer and larger banks in the United States, because Dodd-Frank has layered on "costly new regulations that the large banks can afford but smaller ones cannot."

Ocwen first announced on March 2 it had signed a letter of intent to sell the the $45 billion portfolio, which includes about 266,000 high-quality Fannie Mae loans, to an anonymous buyer. Media reports that surfaced later that week indicated that the buyer was Chase, which was confirmed on Thursday by both parties in the transaction. For Chase, purchasing the high-quality Agency loans is consistent with the New York-based bank's strategy of enhancing the quality of its mortgage business.

In his speech, Watt highlighted that the FHLBanks are an important part of home financing, in that they provide a source of funding and access to the secondary mortgage market and other services to member institutions, especially smaller institutions that have little access these services.

"If big financial institutions know they can get cheap cash from the Fed in a crisis, they have less incentive to manage their risks carefully - which further increases the chance of another financial crisis," Warren said. "This bill would make our financial system safer and help level the playing field between the megabanks and their smaller competitors."