Tag Archives: JPMorgan Chase

Ratings agency Standard & Poor's says mortgage servicers must provide documentation that their foreclosure processes are in compliance with foreclosure laws, or risk receiving a revised outlook or rating from the company. Many mortgage servicers have been under scrutiny recently because of reports of ""robo-signing."" S&P says it expects all residential servicers in its Select Servicer program to prove their compliance with proper foreclosure affidavit procedures by the end of first quarter of 2011.

The time mortgage loan servicers take to resolve delinquent loans through modification or foreclosure varies widely. According to an analysis by Moody's Investors Service, Bank of America has demonstrated the weakest performance measured both by its speed in resolving the status of delinquent loans and by its proportion of delinquent loans that have yet to be resolved. The ratings agency found that GMAC Mortgage, on the other hand, has generally performed better than its peers.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have instructed their selling agents to move forward with transactions involving foreclosed properties in cases where sales were suspended due to potential problems with the legal paperwork. The GSEs were forced to temporarily halt the sale of certain properties when news surfaced that some of the nation's largest servicers had been employing so-called robo-signers. Now that case reviews have uncovered no evidence of improper foreclosures, Fannie and Freddie are moving to proceed with REO sales.

More than a half million people worked in mortgage lending as of October 2005 -- the highest month on record. Five years later, fewer than half are left. Headcount in real estate finance fell by another thousand during the third quarter of this year, according to industry data released Monday. During the July-September period, 3,216 layoffs were tracked while the number of new hirings fell to 2,286. North Carolina saw the largest net gain during the third quarter, with more than 500 mortgage sector jobs added there.

New York City Comptroller John C. Liu has called on the directors at Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase and Citigroup to conduct an independent audit of their mortgage and foreclosure practices. Liu, who is a trustee of the New York City Pension Funds called upon the banks to perform the audit on behalf of the group.

A study released Thursday by J.D. Power and Associates shows that the time from submission of a mortgage application to approval time has increased by more than a week when compared to a year ago, despite changes in RESPA guidelines intended to streamline the process. J.D. Power says this longer timeline has had a negative impact on borrower satisfaction. The nation's largest mortgage lenders - BofA, JPMorgan, and Citi - ranked lowest in the firm's customer satisfaction survey.

The industry's robo-signing problems were the focus on Capitol Hill Tuesday. Executives from major banks, including BofA and Chase, were on hand at a Senate Banking Committee hearing to defend the validity of their foreclosure actions and detail changes that have been made to ensure the integrity of the process. But lawmakers were hardnosed and unforgiving in their accusations. And the hearing was not without incident. Testimony was interrupted by the CEO of a nonprofit advocacy group yelling for distressed borrowers to get their say.

Industry data released Monday shows that the biggest originator of home loans is based on the West Coast, while the biggest mortgage servicer is based on the East Coast. With more than $100 billion in new home loans, Wells Fargo held onto the top spot among mortgage originators during the third quarter of this year. Bank of America took the lead spot in the mortgage servicer rankings, with just over $2 trillion in residential home loans in its servicing portfolio as of September 30th.

JPMorgan Chase says it will re-file affidavits for some 127,000 foreclosures that have been on hold because of ""robo-signing"" issues. According to a company official, the resubmission of corrected documentation should begin by mid-November and will take at least three to four months to complete. The bank says it risks losing a couple million dollars each month the foreclosure proceedings are delayed. Reviews have confirmed that all foreclosure decisions have been based on materially accurate information, according to JPMorgan.

New data released this week shows that the nation's largest banks are holding monstrous volumes of soured home loans. According to an analysis by Weiss Ratings, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo each reported more than $20 billion in single-family mortgages currently foreclosed or in the process of foreclosure as of midyear. In addition, for each dollar these banks held of mortgages in foreclosure, there were another $2 in loans in the pipeline that were 30 days or more past due.