News

Consumer demand for mortgages waned last week, as interest rates edged up for the first time in six weeks. The Mortgage Bankers Association says its index of total mortgage loan application volume dropped 10.5 percent for the week ending October 15. It's the steepest plunge seen in mortgage activity in the past four months, and some market observers are attributing the falloff to the recent turmoil surrounding foreclosure paperwork errors by servicers and the uncertainty it's brought for buyers of distressed properties.

ServiceLink has unveiled a comprehensive, end-to-end default solution that allows servicers to bridge their current technology to the company's optimized loss mitigation and default technology and outsourcing services. ServiceLink says the goal is to help servicers and investors make the optimal workout decision while maximizing asset value and remaining in compliance with changing regulatory rules.

Allegations that some of the nation's largest mortgage servicers cut corners in processing foreclosures and filed unsubstantiated paperwork could turn criminal. With documentation errors reported by at least five mortgage servicers, President Obama's Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force, led by the U.S. Department of Justice, is looking into whether servicers broke federal laws and whether they misled federal housing agencies in the process. Mail and wire fraud may also be an issue.

GMAC Mortgage was the first company to halt foreclosures in 23 states because of concerns that the legal paperwork was not validated and processed correctly. After two months of reviewing individual case files, the company says it will restart foreclosure proceedings. Bank of America has also lifted its foreclosure suspension in 23 states. While both companies say they have found no instances in which a homeowner was wrongly foreclosed upon, at least one county sheriff in the judicial state of Illinois says he's not going to carry out their evictions until they provide further proof.

UrbanAmerica Advisors and Green River Capital have created a joint venture minority business enterprise (MBE) called UrbanAmerica Res Services. Headquartered in Dallas with offices in Salt Lake City, Atlanta, and New York City, UrbanAmerica Res Services is a network of 7,000 deal sourcing, loss mitigation, asset management, and valuation professionals. The new company combines UrbanAmerica Advisors' national infrastructure and local community development relationships with Green River Capital's REO management and short sale services.

Bank of America said Tuesday that it lost $7.3 billion during the three-month period ending in September. The company attributed the deficit to new financial reform regulations related to credit and debit card payments. On the mortgage side of its business, though, the company is seeing improvements. Mortgage banking income jumped 95 percent last quarter, the ratio of nonperforming loans and assets declined, and no sizeable losses are expected from the company's foreclosure suspension and affidavit problems.

According to MLSListings, Inc., headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, it is one of the first multiple listing service (MLS) organizations in the country to make Realtors Property Resource (RPR) available exclusively for its members. RPR is the National Association of Realtors' online real estate database, providing Realtors with data on every parcel of property in the United States, according to the trade group.

Hearing declarations that recovery has taken hold in the commercial real estate sector, with property values and fundamentals on the upswing? Not just yet. Commercial real estate prices have slipped again and are now the lowest they've been since the beginning of the market downturn, according to new data released Tuesday by Moody's Investors Service. In August, the agency's property price index recorded a 3.3 percent drop, as prices fell below the previous low hit in October 2009.

ForeclosureRadar has released its September market report, and the company's data shows that both foreclosure sales and inventories of bank-owned properties are on the rise throughout the West Coast states of Arizona, California, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington. In Nevada, for example, foreclosure sales increased by nearly 40 percent from August to September, with the majority going back to the bank and swelling the REO supply even further.

The co-founder of what was once the largest, most lucrative subprime lender in the country has agreed to pay a total of $67.5 million to settle allegations of fraud. Former Countrywide chief Angelo Mozilo will pay the SEC a $22.5 million penalty to settle charges that he misled investors about the risk associated with Countrywide's business. Mozilo will also pay $45 million to settle insider trading charges. He has been permanently barred from serving as an officer of a publicly traded company.