REO

With the real estate landscape constantly changing, we spoke with Keith Guenther and the USRES team to get their playbook of customer service commandments culled from 25 years in an up-and-down industry. This article was originally featured in the July print edition of DS News.

LRES recently named Jill Haro as VP of Corporate Administration. In this role, Haro will oversee compliance and corporate-wide strategic projects. Haro has more than 15 years of experience working within the mortgage services industry in operations, client relations, and corporate project management.

U.S. Real Estate Services, Inc. (USRES) announced Monday that Tiffany Malm-Ruiz has joined the USRES Management team. Malm-Ruiz will be responsible for the oversight and management of the REO Division alongside Gene Shibata, REO Supervisor, and is in charge with REO client relations, compliance adherence benchmarking, procedural analysis/audit, policy review/analysis, and other managerial responsibilities. Her experience boasts a broad understanding of mortgage servicing, operations, and vendor and asset management.

The Federation of REO Certified Experts—or FORCE, for short—has appointed new leaders to its Advisory Council. Among those named were Hugh Morrow of RE/MAX Preferred in Birmingham, Alabama; Tara Nagelhout of Emerald Valley Real Estate in Eugene, Oregon; Steve Pagano of Coldwell Banker in Huntington Station, New York; Terry Rasner-Yacenda of Reno Tahoe Realty Group in Reno, Nevada; and Dick Thackston of R.H. Thackston & Company in Winchester, New Hampshire. Nancy Braun of Showcase Realty was named Chairperson.

Lerner, Sampson & Rothfuss (LSR) has announced the addition of three new associate attorneys to the firm—Tammy Stickley, Olivia Earls, and Stephen.

After allegedly selling toxic residential mortgage-backed securities which led to the failure of three credit unions, Credit Suisse Securities has agreed to pay $400 million in a settlement on Wednesday. The National Credit Union Administration settled with Credit Suisse, ending a litigation that has lasted nearly five years. The NCUA filed a motion for voluntary dismissal in Kansas federal court on Tuesday.

SunTrust Banks, Inc. reported its Q1 2017 results. The bank posted a net income of $451 million, or $0.91 per average common diluted share. This is a three percent increase over the previous quarter and a four percent year-over-year increase. The bank noted that higher mortgage-related income and investment-related income pushed the noninterest income up by $32 million.

New data shows that 30,000 permanent loan modifications and 95,000 non-foreclosure solutions were completed for the month of February. The month saw only about 22,000 foreclosure sales. Around 90 percent of families that had a rate-resetting loan modification for the month avoided foreclosure.

Q1 was good to Bank of America, which posted a 40 percent increase in overall net income. Loan revenues, too, were up, as was consumer and global banking. But total mortgage was down compared to a year ago, as were average loans and leases.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have made headway on goals set forth in the 2016 Scorecard by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, according to the FHFA's Progress Report released on Wednesday. GSE efforts to improve credit access, assist borrowers, and reduce taxpayer credit risk were all noted in the agency's report. FHFA is currently soliciting comments on the Progress Report at FHFA.gov.