News

The Federal Reserve found a small increase in consumers' willingness to borrow and banks' willingness to lend, but a decline in loan balances, according to the second-quarter household debt report issued Monday by the central bank's New York arm. Mortgage debt and home equity lines of credit each decreased by about $20 billion during the second quarter of 2011. This represents a 0.2 percent drop for mortgage balances and a 3 percent drop for home equity loans.

PMI Group Inc. says its primary subsidiary PMI Mortgage Insurance Co. could be forced to stop issuing new mortgage insurance policies. The company alerted investors of the possibility that its business could come to a halt last week, at the same time it reported a company-wide net loss of $134.8 million for the second quarter. According to a filing with the SEC, PMI Mortgage Insurance's capital holdings have slipped to $320 million below the minimum required by the Arizona Department of Insurance, its primary regulator.

TransUnion's mortgage performance barometer has recorded its largest drop in delinquencies since the end of the recession two years ago. The credit bureau says mortgage delinquencies improved 5.98 percent during the second quarter, with the rate of homeowners 60 or more days past due declining to 5.82 percent. TransUnion predicts delinquencies will continue to decline throughout the year, thanks to conservative lending policies that cater to consumers with higher credit scores.

Home Loan Servicing Solutions, Ltd. (HLSS) is preparing an initial public offering (IPO) of 18.3 million shares. HLSS is a spin-off of Georgia-based Ocwen Financial Corporation. Simultaneously with the offering, HLSS founder and chairman of the board of directors, William C. Erbey, will purchase $10 million of HLSS's ordinary shares at the same price as the IPO. HLSS plans to distribute at least 90 percent of its net income to shareholders through monthly cash dividends.

Claims Recovery Financial Services, LLC (CRFS) has hired Lynette Richter as consulting manager. She will be responsible for overseeing all operational aspects of the firm's newly launched consulting and training group. Richter has over 25 years of management, technical, and consulting experience in the mortgage servicing profession. Prior to CRFS, she was director of quality assurance with the consulting firm Lyons McCloskey, LLC.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency shut down First National Bank of Olathe in Kansas on Friday evening and appointed the FDIC as receiver. So far this year, 64 insured institutions have landed on the FDIC's failed bank list. First National Bank of Olathe is the first Kansas-based institution to make that list in 2011. Enterprise Bank & Trust of Clayton Missouri agreed to take over the failed lender.

CoreLogic announced the availability of RiskModel Version 4.4 this week. The new technology offering is an analytics application that forecasts future mortgage prepayments, defaults, losses, and cash flows at both the loan and portfolio level. This latest version integrates the CoreLogic Home Price Index (HPI) with new transition and loss-given-default models for Alt-A first and second-lien mortgages, allowing more than 75 percent of the loans in the development dataset to be estimated at the ZIP code level.

Servicers completed 2,213 pre-foreclosure short sales and deeds-in-lieu (DIL) under the government's Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives (HAFA) program during the month of June. Treasury's latest report shows the program is beginning to pick up steam. The number of completed HAFA transactions climbed 55 percent compared to the 1,428 transactions completed in May. That follows a 70 percent jump in finalized HAFA deals between the months of March and April.

Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden has announced his opposition to the proposed $8.5 million Bank of America settlement. He sent a petition to the New York Supreme Court expressing his disapproval and requesting permission to intervene in the court's review of the settlement. ""I am intervening to enforce our laws and to protect Delaware investors who may have been harmed by these toxic securities,"" Biden said. ""Intervening in this settlement puts us in position to ensure that the banks are playing by the rules.""

Mortgage delinquencies remain elevated while other aspects of the consumer credit picture, such as bankcard performance, are improving, according to a new report from Experian. The credit bureau says instances of 60-day mortgage delinquencies have risen by 25 percent from 2007, prior to the recession, while 60-day credit card delinquencies have decreased 20 percent since that time. Portland shows the greatest increase in missed mortgage payments, almost double since 2007.