News

A lawsuit was filed against GFI Mortgage Bankers alleging it charged African American and Hispanic borrowers higher interest rates and fees on mortgage loans because of their race rather than their creditworthiness, the Justice Department announced Tuesday. At a time when so many American homeowners - of all races - are struggling to make their mortgage payments, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York says it is unacceptable that GFI's practices resulted in higher fees and rates for minority customers.

RES.NET announced Tuesday that the company has launched a custom tasking enhancement for all its software applications. The company calls the new feature ""revolutionary,"" enabling servicers and asset managers to create fields and customize tasks and workflows on the fly without being impacted by development constraints or quality assurance issues. Custom tasking enables users to add fields to track regulatory changes, tasks to cover process changes, or workflow assignments to solve departmental inefficiencies - all within minutes.

Morgan Stanley may have sold its servicing sector off, but it's still going to be under a watchful eye for previous practices. The Federal Reserve issued a consent order against Morgan Stanley Tuesday to address servicing and foreclosure issues from the company’s former subsidiary Saxon Mortgage Services. The consent order requires Morgan Stanley to hire an independent consultant to review foreclosure proceedings initiated by Saxon that occurred between 2009 and 2010. According to the Fed, Saxon was ranked the 34th largest residential servicer.

Across the board, loan performance improved for February, and foreclosure starts were down compared to the month before in January, according to a report from LPS Applied Analytics. Despite the decrease in foreclosure starts, foreclosure inventory still remains near historic highs, while delinquency rates are at their lowest level since August 2008. Foreclosure starts were down 15.2 percent compared to the previous month, reversing the increase seen during January. Foreclosure inventory was at 4.13 percent in February, a 0.5 percent monthly decrease, but still remains high. In December 2005, foreclosure inventory was at 0.48 percent.

Despite the fact that key market indicators released in recent weeks have shown declines in home sales, anecdotal reports from real estate agents in the field suggest better days are ahead for the industry, according to commentary released Monday by the economic team at Wells Fargo Securities. Most agents are reporting ""significant gains in buyer interest and sales,"" and as a result, Wells' economists have nudged their forecast for home sales slightly higher. They are expecting sales of existing homes to top out at 4.50 million in 2012 and rise to 4.65 million in 2013.

Homeowners who have had mortgage debt forgiven after a foreclosure, modification, or short sale may be able to exclude the canceled debt from their taxable income if they meet specific criteria. According to Gil Charney, principal analyst at The Tax Institute at H&R Block, the specific criteria to have forgiven debt excluded are the debt must have been incurred to buy, build or substantially improve the residence, called ""acquisition debt, and the property must be the taxpayer's primary residence.

HOPE NOW, a private sector alliance of mortgage servicers, investors, mortgage insurers, and non-profit counselors, estimated 45,000 homeowners received permanent, non-HAMP loan modifications from mortgage servicers during February 2012, down from 56,000, or 20 percent, compared to the month before in January. While modifications were down, foreclosure sales and foreclosure starts also declined on a month-over-month basis, with 69,000 foreclosure sales and 167,000 foreclosure starts in February, compared to 79,000 sales, a 12 percent drop, and 200,000 starts, a 17 percent drop, in January.

J.P. Morgan recently announced the issuance of $132 million in commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) backed by non-performing commercial real estate loans. According to the Wall Street Journal, the issuance is first time since the late 1990s. Prior to the securitization, the assets were owned by Rialto Capital Management, a real estate investment management company focused on distressed asset investment, management, and workouts.

State regulators closed Fidelity Bank of Dearborn, Michigan over the weekend, the first bank in Michigan to fail and the 16th in the nation to go dark.

The city of Los Angeles, California, is putting its Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) funds to work with the launch of a new initiative to create jobs rehabilitating foreclosed properties in communities impacted by the housing crisis. The new ""Bridges to Business Success"" program is a public-private initiative providing small minority business owners with procurement training and contract opportunities to create and retain jobs. Los Angeles has been awarded $143 million in NSP funds.