News

Pro Teck Valuation Services announced this week that Dan Rizzotti has been promoted to director of quality improvement. He will report directly to Jeff Dickstein, the company's chief appraiser. Prior to his new position, Rizzotti was a senior account manager at Pro Teck. He is a certified appraiser with more than 15 years of real estate valuation experience across various sectors of the industry including origination, servicing, and capital markets.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke says its all the distress in the housing sector that's pulling home prices and consumer confidence down and keeping buyers away from the market, despite the fact that the Fed's bond-buying program has succeeded in keeping interest rates low and housing affordable. Bernanke says he'd like to see more efforts to modify loans, but when that's not appropriate, the industry needs to speed up the process of foreclosure and disposition to clear the market.

Servicers have been ordered to institute a clear resolution process for consumer complaints. Accountability when it comes to dealing with distressed borrowers has become a central focus of mortgage servicing reform, but an audit conducted by the Federal Housing Finance Agency's inspector general found that the GSEs' regulator is itself lacking in this area. The report says the agency has let complaints alleging fraud, abuse, and improper foreclosures slip through the cracks with no oversight of their resolution. FHFA says it will take actions to remedy the issue.

Oklahoma-based a la mode announced this week that a second major technology provider has selected the company's Mercury Network to ensure compliance with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's Uniform Mortgage Data Program (UMDP). Lender Processing Services' LSI division is the latest to sign on to a la mode's system. Last week, the company said CoreLogic has also chosen its Mercury Network for appraisal management that meets the GSEs' requirements.

Fannie Mae announced Wednesday that the company has hired Susan McFarland to serve as EVP and CFO, effective July 11. McFarland will also take a seat on Fannie Mae's executive committee. She joins Fannie Mae from Capital One Financial Corporation, one of the top 10 banks in America, where she was EVP and finance and principal accounting officer, and led a team of 500 professionals.

Home prices in the U.S. rose in April for the first time since last spring, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) reported Wednesday. The agency's House Price Index recorded a 0.8 percent seasonally adjusted increase between March and April - the first month-over-month gain since May 2010. The index is calculated using purchase prices of houses backing mortgages that have been sold to or guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The shadow inventory of repossessed and soon-to-be repossessed homes not yet visible to the market has been trimmed, according to CoreLogic. The company reports that as of April 2011, the industry's shadow supply fell to 1.7 million units, down from 1.9 million a year earlier. CoreLogic attributes the decline to fewer new delinquencies and a high level of distressed sales, which has helped to reduce the deluge of foreclosure properties on a market already beset by a supply and demand imbalance.

The Securities and Exchange Commission said Tuesday that JPMorgan Chase has agreed to pay $153.6 million to settle charges that it misled investors in a complex mortgage securities transaction just as the housing market was starting to plummet. JPMorgan noted in a statement that its securities affiliate named in the SEC complaint ultimately lost nearly $900 million in connection with the deal. The SEC, though, says the company failed to disclose that the hedge fund involved in structuring the deal stood to profit if the assets defaulted.

Data released by Lender Processing Services (LPS) Tuesday puts the number of home mortgages that are delinquent or in foreclosure at 6,350,000. The company's assessment is based on mortgage performance statistics derived from its loan-level database through the end of the month of May. In April, LPS reported that there were 6,388,000 mortgages going unpaid. The month-over-month decline can be attributed to both a decrease in the national delinquency rate and a drop in foreclosure inventories.

DebtX, a loan sale advisor for commercial, consumer, and specialty finance debt, says it is working with a number of financial institutions to provide loan portfolio due diligence services to evaluate merger and acquisition (M&A) transactions. The company's M&A advisory service offers asset evaluation, loss forecasting, and cash flow analysis for buying and selling institutions considering strategic transactions.