Loss Mitigation

Chase is continuing its eight-city tour to provide targeted, face-to-face mortgage assistance for borrowers who may be facing foreclosure. From Friday, July 23 to Friday July 30, a team of the bank's loan advisors will be setting up shop in downtown Washington, D.C. at the Mayflower, Renaissance Hotel to counsel struggling homeowners and help them find the right solution for their financial situations.

Interthinx has expanded its risk services to collateral valuation. In an effort to change the way appraisals are analyzed, the company recently launched Interthinx Review Appraisal Services - an appraisal review service that leverages the company's expertise in fraud analytics and helps lenders mitigate the risk of investor buybacks due to collateral valuation issues. To provide these services to its national client network, Interthinx combined its appraisal team with the technical expertise of the Appraisal.com platform developed by ACI.

Bank of America Home Loans announced Wednesday that it has opened a new customer outreach center in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in order to better serve financially troubled homeowners in the South Florida area. This is the second customer outreach center the bank has opened this week. As DSNews.com previously reported, Bank of America announced Monday that it opened a new help center in Dedham, Massachusetts.

Included in the Treasury's latest installment of the Home Affordable Modification Program's (HAMP) monthly progress report is a new section detailing the performance of loans permanently modified. The report says the redefault rate for homeowners that have been in permanent modifications for at least six months is 1.7 percent. In commentary published Wednesday, analysts at Barclays Capital took issue with the Treasury's calculations, primarily because trial cancellations are not factored into the equation.

CoreLogic announced Tuesday the availability of WillCap, a new decisioning system that has the ability to predict distressed borrowers' willingness and capacity to make their mortgage payments, thus giving investors and servicers the ability to make more strategic loan modification, short sale, and liquidation decisions at both a loan and portfolio level.

The National Association of Real Estate Brokers (NAREB) convenes its 63rd National Convention as economic volatility, high foreclosure rates, and continued unemployment contribute further to the already-precarious conditions of the nation's housing marketplace. Meeting July 29 through August 4, at the Renaissance Worthington Hotel in Fort Worth, Texas, conference attendees are expected to discuss innovative approaches and cross-sector strategies that can be employed to rebuild confidence in the nation's housing market, and at the same time protect financially-distressed homeowners.

Data through June 2010, released Tuesday by Standard & Poor's and Experian points to a declining trend in consumer default rates, with a reduction in first mortgage past dues leading the drop. Based on data extracted from Experian's database of approximately $11 trillion in outstanding loans, first and second mortgage default rates were 3.3 percent and 2.4 percent, respectively, as of the end of last month. The companies say default rates on first mortgages are down 45 percent from a year ago; second mortgage defaults have dropped 44 percent.

Bolstered by the big four banks' loss mitigation efforts, the total number of active permanent modifications completed under the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) jumped to 389,198 as of the end of June. Servicers completed 51,205 permanent modifications during the month, and more than half - 26,525 - of these were initiated by the nation's four largest banks - Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, and Citi.

New data from the Treasury shows that the redefault rate for the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) is far lower than many critics have projected and well below typical industry averages. According to the July report, the re-default rate (90 or more days past due) for homeowners in permanent modifications for at least six months is 1.7 percent. The latest figures from the OCC put the redefault rate of mortgages modified by the nation's 11 largest servicers - incorporating proprietary mod programs - at 57 percent.

In an effort to further serve financially troubled homeowners in New England, Bank of America Home Loans has opened a new customer outreach center in Dedham, Massachusetts. The new help center will serve customers in the Boston area and surrounding region. These at-risk borrowers will be able to schedule face-to-face meetings with Bank of America homeownership retention specialists who will help determine customers' eligibility for the federal government's Making Home Affordable program or other Bank of America modification or foreclosure avoidance programs.