Print Features

Ensuring a well-trained workforce could mean the difference between sinking or swimming in today’s strictly regulated environment. This select feature originally appeared in the May 2015 issue of DS News.

There are multiple levels of regulation in the financial services industry with federal, state, and even local officials supervising companies within the industry. These regulators often cooperate, but also sometimes act in conflict with one another in their pursuit of consumer protection and enforcement of laws. This select print feature originally appeared in the February 2015 issue of DS News magazine.

Today’s housing market barely resembles the market that existed five or even four years ago, much less the environment that was in place when Ginnie Mae was created in 1968 or when it issued the world’s first mortgage-backed security (MBS) in 1970.

The year ahead is shaping up to be one of great change in housing with uncertainty lurking around every corner. Brian Montgomery, industry expert and veteran of both the Bush and Obama Administrations, gives his insight on what to expect.

With so many legal stipulations to bear in mind, deserted dwellings are anything but an open-and-shut case. As foreclosure resolution time frames swell, servicers and investors must maintain property preservation standards for longer periods of time. Properties at the highest risk of loss or damage are vacant properties. Vacancy presents a host of problems to servicers and investors in managing their foreclosure inventory. Paramount among those concerns is vandalism.

In light of their ineffectiveness in preventing another downturn in housing and their possible contribution to the slowness of the housing recovery, the question then becomes whether the imposition of penalties by the federal government, while "not insurmountable," is really in the best interest of the American consumer. Are they prudent or just petty?

In the housing industry, the only constant is change. In an economy that is still on the road to housing recovery and an industry that is still in a period of consolidation after the biggest financial downturn since the Great Depression, the best in the business are nimble on their feet and adaptable to the set of circumstances that is presented.

New regulations have the propensity to transform the mortgage industry into a system where servicers deliver, regulators protect, and consumers trust again. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) mortgage servicing regulations aim to do just that—get delinquent borrowers into loan modification plans and establish effective communication channels between the servicer and borrower to ultimately protect them from foreclosure.

Select Print Feature, originally appeared in the February 2013 issue of DS News magazine.   Suicide. Accusations of prosecutorial overkill fanned by political aspirations. Scores of homeowners perhaps unfairly evicted. All elements, surely, of a nightmarish made-for-TV movie, right? Unfortunately, ...

Select Print Feature, originally appeared in the December 2012 issue of DS News Magazine.   For get prices. Forget mortgage rates. The main driver of housing demand—according to three separate and distinct market studies—is confidence, primarily assurance that the value ...