Tag Archives: Ocwen

Amid a challenging environment for servicers, CitiMortgage, GMAC, and Ocwen have outperformed major competitors with regards to loss mitigation and foreclosure timelines, according to a recent report from Moody's Investors Service. The company's Servicer Dashboard rates major servicers on their performance from June 2010 to June 2011. Moody's notes that Bank of America's and Chase's performance assessments were affected by large servicing acquisitions and foreclosure moratoria.

Treasury has released the results of its second-quarter assessment of servicers participating in the Making Home Affordable program. Officials say they will continue to withhold program incentives owed to Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase. The two were determined to need ""substantial improvement"" in key areas including borrower evaluations. BofA and JPMorgan received the same score last quarter, as did Wells Fargo, but Wells has now elevated its grade to needing ""moderate improvement.""

The ratings agency DBRS made principal reductions the focus of a research note released Monday. The firm's analysts stressed that as a modification technique, debt forgiveness has long been regarded as controversial in the mortgage industry due to its moral hazard risk and the potential impact it could have on the performance of securitized mortgages. As such, it's been utilized on a very limited basis. Based on first-quarter data, DBRS found that principal reduction modifications accounted for 2.80 percent of the total mods performed.

Ocwen Financial Corporation has enacted a unique loan modification program designed to help underwater homeowners and investors without rewarding loan delinquency. The company's Shared Appreciation Modification (SAM) reduces a delinquent borrower's principal to 95 percent of the home's current market value but requires the homeowner to later share 25 percent of the home's appreciation with the investor when the home is eventually sold or refinanced.

The U.S. Treasury has released its regular monthly report card on the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP). New this time is an assessment of how the 10 largest HAMP servicers are performing. Four servicers have been designated as needing ""substantial"" improvement: Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Ocwen Loan Servicing, and Wells Fargo. Treasury says it will withhold financial incentives from three of these companies until they make identified improvements.

Specialty servicer Ocwen Financial Corporation recently launched a new product to help buyers of non-performing loan portfolios or residuals of private-label securities get more value from their loans. A turnkey product, PlatformPlus allows distressed asset investors to set up their own specialty servicing operations using Ocwen's expertise and management.

Goldman Sachs has agreed to sell its residential mortgage servicing subsidiary to Ocwen Financial Corp. Ocwen will pay $263.7 million in cash to acquire Litton Loan Servicing. In addition to the cash purchase price, Ocwen will lay out another $337 million to take care of some of Litton's outstanding debt. The deal will result in Ocwen's acquisition of a servicing portfolio of approximately $41.2 billion in unpaid principal balance of primarily non-prime residential mortgage loans.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has requested documents and information from Ocwen Financial related to its loan servicing activities as part of a civil investigation, the company said in its annual regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Florida-based specialty loan servicer, which focuses on bringing highly distressed loans back to performing status, is the latest mark in a number of investigations by government agencies targeting the mortgage servicing industry.

Moody's Investors Service studied two million loans backing residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) pools and found that a loan that is modified and then reported as current is three times as likely to default over the ensuing twelve months as a current loan that has not been modified. The agency's also put the practices of eight major servicers under the microscope. It found that six-month re-default rates vary considerably, from 20 percent for Citi and Litton to 33 percent for Bank of America.

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.