Tag Archives: Foreclosure Prevention

Brandy Sams has joined WFG National Title Insurance Company as the director of its default services division. Sams' career in the mortgage and real estate industries spans a period of more than 15 years. She worked most recently in the secondary market with Fannie Mae. She also held the position of title and escrow specialist for a national servicer and title and escrow manager with a California-based title company.

Chase has opened two new Homeownership Centers in North Carolina to provide one-on-one help for borrowers struggling with their mortgage payments - one in Fayetteville, near Fort Bragg and the second in Jacksonville, near Camp Lejeune. The company is staffing all of its Homeownership Centers near military bases with employees who have served in the military or military family members. Chase also recently set up Centers near bases in Texas and Virginia, and has plans for openings later this year in Tennessee and Washington.

Rep. Darrell Issa of California has sent a letter to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) expressing his concerns and requesting information about an alleged deal between Fannie Mae and Bank of America. Issa references an August 10th report detailing a deal between Fannie and the bank in which the GSE reportedly purchased the mortgage servicing rights of 400,000 troubled loans for $500 million. Issa says the transaction is ""worrisome"" and appears to have shifted risk from BofA to Fannie Mae.

At a hearing before a Senate subcommittee this week, witnesses urged Congress to help more underwater homeowners refinance their loans at current, record-low interest rates. The Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP) allows underwater homeowners with mortgages backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to refinance their mortgages at lower interest rates. However, the program has helped fewer than 900,000 of the more than 10 million underwater homeowners in the country.

Several servicers remain below median performance level as of the first half of the year, as ranked by Fannie Mae's Servicer Total Achievement and Rewards (STAR) Program. Fannie Mae announced the STAR Program in February to measure servicers' success in providing sustainable solutions to distressed homeowners. The mid-year results released Wednesday by the GSE indicate that only four out of the 11 banks in Peer Group 1 are on track to receive at least a three-STAR rating at the end of the year.

Nearly 10.9 million, or 22.5 percent, of all residential mortgages had negative equity at the end of the second quarter of the year, according to a report released Tuesday by the analytics firm CoreLogic. The figure is actually a slight improvement from the 22.7 percent of all mortgages with negative equity in the first quarter of 2011. CoreLogic says nearly three-quarters of homeowners in negative equity situations are also paying higher, above-market interest on their mortgages.

Freddie Mac has rolled out a new standard for mortgage modifications that the GSE says will strengthen servicers' ability to support positive outcomes for financially distressed borrowers. It replaces Freddie Mac's classic modification. The ""Standard Modification"" is available to borrowers who don't qualify for the government's Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) and includes a trial period to help reduce re-default rates. It is part of the Servicing Alignment Initiative underway at the two GSEs.

President Obama's speech introducing his new Jobs Act included a pledge to refinance millions of home mortgages. Documents released since then by the White House and a key housing regulator reveal that the government-led refi push will indeed center around an overhaul of the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP). The administration says it intends to remove the barriers that exist in the current program to allow more borrowers to qualify as long as they have a history of making their payments on time.

Housing got only a brief mention in President Obama's highly anticipated jobs speech Thursday night, but it was a pledge that some pundits say is a step in the right direction. Others say it's likely to have little impact. Obama told Congress his administration will work to refinance millions of homeowners' mortgages at today's record-low rates. It's expected the program will give borrowers who are underwater or have bad marks on their credit the opportunity to take out lower-rate, lower-payment loans.

Commerce Velocity, a member of the Fidelity National Financial family of companies, has enhanced its Optimizer solution to help achieve the new requirements for the Quality Right Party Contact (QRPC) standard outlined by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as part of the GSEs' servicing alignment initiative. The new enhancements are designed to arm servicers with technology to document communication to the borrower regarding the resolution of their delinquent mortgage, as required by QRPC.