News

Fannie Mae last week opened a mortgage help center in Sacramento, California, to provide free education and counseling services to struggling local homeowners with Fannie Mae-owned mortgages. The facility is Fannie Mae's 10th mortgage help center across the country. The GSE developed the center in partnership with NeighborWorks HomeOwnership Center Sacramento Region, which staffs the office, as well as with local community and elected officials and area mortgage servicers.

Former President George W. Bush addressed an audience of participants throughout the default servicing industry Tuesday morning at the Five Star Default Servicing Conference and Expo. Touching on a few challenging moments in his presidency, including the September 11 attack, Bush said, ""You have to surround yourself with people whose judgment you trust."" Bush discussed the difficult decision to administer TARP in 2008.

The Senate Banking Committee held a hearing Tuesday on housing finance reform, the first of three housing-related hearings on the agenda this week. The issue of government guarantees for home mortgages came under some fire. One witness with the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. noted that without any change in policies and without any further increase in the GSEs' debt, the national debt will reach $30 trillion in 10 years.

The auditorium at one of the Monday morning sessions of the Five Star Default Servicing Conference and Expo gasped when Ron Nation, founder and CEO of JVI Solutions, LLC presented two very different looking images of an REO. ""Do your best to avoid the drive-by appraisal,"" said Nation, referring to the pictures. Panelists stressed that accurately and reliably determining an asset's value can not only turn into more business, but can preserve neighborhoods.

Freddie Mac has rolled out a new standard for mortgage modifications that the GSE says will strengthen servicers' ability to support positive outcomes for financially distressed borrowers. It replaces Freddie Mac's classic modification. The ""Standard Modification"" is available to borrowers who don't qualify for the government's Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) and includes a trial period to help reduce re-default rates. It is part of the Servicing Alignment Initiative underway at the two GSEs.

While many REO offices are having a difficult time gathering listings, some brokerages are finding ways to continue to succeed in the current market. Experts in the field shared their secrets for rising to the top with other agents and brokers at the Five Star Conference in Dallas, Texas, on Monday. They say staffing is an important issue for anyone running an REO office, as is finding innovative ways to add value for clients and working to make the exchange between asset managers and their selling agents run smoothly.

American Home Mortgage Servicing Inc. (AHMSI), based in Coppell, Texas, has deployed a new system to keep call center agents up-to-date on regulatory changes. AHMSI had relied on a learning management system to train its agents but had difficulty finding the time to use the technology without taking the agents away from their duties, hurting service levels, according to Atlanta, Georgia-based Knowlagent, which supplied its RightTime technology to AHMSI.

Mortgage fraud grew in the second quarter of the year but was down from where it was a year earlier, according to the Second Quarter 2011 Mortgage Fraud Index, released Monday by MortgageDaily.com. The index, based on criminal and civil cases in which defendants allegedly attempted to deceive real estate lenders into making credit decisions based on fraudulent documentation or false appraisal values, increased to 1261 based on 194 cases during the quarter, up 27 percent from the previous period, but down from 1699 for the same period last year.

Though the average time for a short sale has dropped from 256 days in the first quarter of the year to 245 days in the second quarter of 2011, the process could be made shorter with better training, said Chris Plummer, managing director of Dallas-based Wingspan Real Estate Network (WREN), an affiliate of special servicer Wingspan Portfolio Advisors, based in Carrollton, Texas. WREN is partnering with the Five Star Institute, a Dallas-based mortgage industry group, to encourage the widespread participation by real estate agents in the Five Star Short Sale Certification Training Program, which features Fannie Mae Short Sale Assistance Desk (SSAD) training.

Commercial and multifamily mortgage delinquency rates among four out of five major investor groups decreased in the second quarter of 2011, with only the 30-day delinquency rate for loans held in commercial mortgage-backed securities increasing, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. The rate for loans held by FDIC-insured banks and thrifts that were at least 90 days delinquent decreased 0.25 percent between the first and second quarters, while delinquencies for life company portfolios and the GSEs both declined, but by smaller ratios.