News

Total Mortgage Services, LLC, a Connecticut-based mortgage lender, has received approval from Fannie Mae to be a seller/servicer for one-to-four unit single-family first lien mortgages. The company explained that with the designation it can now retain mortgage servicing rights for GSE loans, as well as sell and pool loans into mortgage backed securities (MBS) and expand its product offerings.

A recent study by Jihad C. Dagher and Ning Fu of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) found a correlation between the increase in originations from ""lightly regulated"" non-bank lenders and the rise in foreclosures and unemployment in the United States. The authors believe stricter regulation of non-bank mortgage originators could have prevented the housing crisis altogether or at least averted some of the volatility seen in the current housing environment.

Banks held about 476,000 homes that they repossessed from delinquent mortgage borrowers as of the end of July, according to Barclays Capital. That tally represents a 17 percent contraction from 574,000 REOs on the books just 10 months earlier, in September of 2010, just as the robo-signing scandal began grabbing headlines. According to Barclays' analysis, the average number of months a loan has spent in foreclosure has climbed from around 10 months just before October of last year to more than 12 months today.

Gerner & Kearns, Co., L.P.A. (G&K) recently announced that it has been designated by the FDIC as outside counsel in the states of Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, and Michigan. The firm's practice areas include foreclosure, bankruptcy, evictions, origination and REO closings, loss mitigation, and commercial litigation with respect to the industry's residential and commercial portfolios.

Matt Martin Real Estate Management (MMREM) has named lending industry veteran Ivan Choi to the newly-created position of senior vice president. In his new role, Choi will be a key member of MMREM's executive and planning team, working directly with CEO and founder Matt Martin, as well as the management team of Sperlonga Data & Analytics, MMREM's affiliate company.

DecisionReady -- a California-based provider of default servicing compliance solutions -- has just introduced a new vendor compliance management module to work with its compliance suite. DecisionReady designed the module to address the shortcomings regulators found in their 2010 Interagency Review of Foreclosure Policies and Practices. The regulators found that third-party vendors were not being properly managed.

Nonprofits across the country are partnering up with lenders and government agencies to minimize neighborhood blight caused by vacant foreclosed properties. The topic was part of the curriculum at the Five Star Default Servicing Conference and Expo, and the panelists found themselves speaking to a full house. Paul Kaboth with the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland started the discussion by stressing that a marketplace strained with high levels of REOs and vacancies will persist for at least another five years.

Field Asset Services (FAS), a nationwide provider of field services to the REO industry, announced the availability of a new pre-foreclosure service called Avert this week. The company explained that by utilizing integrated technology and building on FAS's experienced staff, Avert offers banks and servicers, for the first time, a single source solution to reduce default expenses and avoid foreclosures.

Rep. Darrell Issa of California has sent a letter to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) expressing his concerns and requesting information about an alleged deal between Fannie Mae and Bank of America. Issa references an August 10th report detailing a deal between Fannie and the bank in which the GSE reportedly purchased the mortgage servicing rights of 400,000 troubled loans for $500 million. Issa says the transaction is ""worrisome"" and appears to have shifted risk from BofA to Fannie Mae.

Foreclosure starts soared during the month of August in states along the country's western coast, reversing what had been a declining trend over the past several months, according to ForeclosureRadar. The firm keeps close tabs on foreclosure activity in the states of Arizona, California, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington. It recorded a spike in the first notice filed in the foreclosure process across the five-state coverage area, driven by a 116 percent month-over-month increase in activity from Bank of America.