Daily News related to the Foreclosure Crisis

The biggest unpunished heist in human history - Max Keiser

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11/30/23

The U.S. Treasury’s Financial Crisis Warning Bell Didn’t Ring Before the Repo Crisis of 2019 or This Year’s Bank Runs
The Office of Financial Research (OFR) is a unit of the U.S. Treasury Department. OFR was created as part of the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation of 2010 to keep the Financial Stability Oversight Council (F-SOC) informed about emerging threats that have the potential to spread contagion throughout the U.S. financial system — as occurred in 2008 in the worst financial crash since the Great Depression.

11/30/23

Investors buying up homes in Massachusetts at red-hot pace: report
An investor purchased one in every five homes sold between 2004 and 2018 across Greater Boston, a recent finding that housing advocates say is not surprising and one that confirms what they’ve seen anecdotally in their communities over the past decade. The Metropolitan Area Planning Council released a report this week, dubbed “Homes for Profit: Speculation and Investment in Greater Boston,” showing that investors accounted for 21% of total home sales in the region during the period. Roughly 87% of the transactions involved single-family homes and condominiums, with investor activity increasing from 16% of purchases in 2004 to 23% in 2018, the report found.

11/30/23

FHA issues extensive new reverse mortgage servicing updates
The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) on Thursday published new Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) servicing guidance in response to industry feedback. In Mortgagee Letter (ML) 2023-23, FHA has codified several core reverse mortgage program servicing changes after posting an initial draft ML on the Single Family Drafting Table at the beginning of November.

11/29/23

Managing Today’s Tech Trends in Mortgage Servicing
Gagan Sharma is the Founder and CEO of BSI Financial Inc., a cloud-based, open API and AI-driven platform. BSI offers an end-to-end digital servicing platform that enables investors and originators to transact seamlessly, with automated loan boarding, investor reporting, and data-driven loan monitoring through the lifecycle of the mortgage. BSI Financial has also built a proprietary AI-driven compliance automation and workflow that ensures complex, state-by-state regulations are kept up-to-date and acted on with precision and certainty, providing real-time visibility into the mortgage details and exceptions.

11/24/23

Foreclosure Whirlwind: Report Unveils A Tale Of Contrasts
The latest snapshot of the U.S. real estate landscape reveals a nuanced pattern of foreclosure filings. Real estate data firm ATTOM's October U.S. Foreclosure Market Report shows a 6% decline from September, suggesting a respite; the report also underscores a 6% increase compared to the same period a year ago. The dynamics reflect a delicate balance with signs of improvement slightly tempered by persistent challenges, creating an environment where homeowners, lenders and policymakers must navigate a complex intersection of economic forces. The report found there were 34,472 foreclosure filings encompassing a range of stress indicators, including default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions.

11/22/23

The housing market’s deep slump, in five charts
The U.S. housing market is slumping. Home sales have dropped this year, as high prices, high borrowing costs and a low supply of available homes have combined to send potential buyers to the sidelines. Here are five charts that show the state of the housing market.

11/22/23

Six Big Banks Forced to Declare $9.3 Billion in Additional FDIC Expenses; Another Reason Their Talons Are Out for FDIC Chair Gruenberg
The biggest banks in the U.S. that have been serially bailed out by the Federal Reserve since they blew up the financial system in 2008, are ripping mad at the Chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), Martin Gruenberg. In addition to the FDIC and other federal banking regulators’ proposed rule to increase capital requirements on the largest banks, the FDIC just issued a final rule on November 16 that will force six banks to report an FDIC special assessment expense totaling more than $9.3 billion in the final quarter of this year. (See chart above.)

11/21/23

The VA stops foreclosures for thousands of veterans after NPR investigation
The Department of Veterans Affairs put a stop to foreclosures for veterans with VA home loans after NPR found that thousands were at risk of losing their homes through no fault of their own.

11/20/23

5 Triggers to Shift In-House Servicing to a Subservicer
Efficiency in mortgage servicing is vital, especially during times of significant change in the mortgage landscape. Changes in the market, such as interest rate shifts, regulatory alterations, or major economic events, can trigger a surge in mortgage applications, refinancing requests, or default rates. An efficient mortgage servicing operation is better equipped to handle these fluctuations, maintaining seamless customer experience, minimizing the risk of errors, and ensuring regulatory compliance.

11/17/23

'Zombie mortgages' could be attached to a property, even if they were charged off years ago
LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Zombie mortgages: are they as terrifying as they sound? They could be. Last month, Eyewitness News shared the story of Carson resident Adaina Brown. Her dream home is turning into a nightmare. "It kind of just broke my heart," she said last month. "I told my husband, 'I can't take another thing.'" When she and her husband bought the house in 2007, they needed a first and second mortgage. She said after property values plummeted, one of her lenders eventually charged off the second loan. She received a letter stating she was not responsible for the debt. "'This debt has been charged off. You are no longer liable for this debt,'" Brown said as she recalled what was indicated in the letter. But that's where it gets tricky. Even if you are not responsible personally, a lien can still remain against the property. Another loan company now has that debt and says there is still an amount due of more than $139,000. "The company that now owns that debt, whether it's a debt collector or a new loan company, is coming back after it because housing prices have risen and they're hoping to collect on that," explained Ali Hashemian, the President of Kinetic Financial. After ABC7's report, the new loan company, Specialized Loan Servicing, or SLS, sent Eyewitness News at statement, saying in part "... There is a mortgage lien on the property that is intact and enforceable. A lien remains in place on the property in question until the debt is resolved through payment in full, an agreed settlement, or foreclosure." It's like a horror story. ByKinetic Financial President Ali Hashemian Financial experts worry there are thousands of these so-called "zombie mortgages" handled by many different companies, and homeowners might not be aware of the consequences.

11/14/23

The Deposit Insurance Fund Has a Balance of $117 Billion to Protect Deposits at 4,622 Banks. But One of Those Banks Has $1.4 Trillion in Uninsured Deposits
Today, the U.S. Senate Banking Committee will call federal banking regulators before it to testify at a hearing at 10 a.m. The underlying theme will be why these regulators were caught napping when the second, third, and fourth largest bank failures in U.S. history occurred in a span of seven weeks this past Spring and hear about the new plans of action to restore confidence in the U.S. banking system.

11/13/23

PHH Mortgage Announces New Subservicing Agreement With Zillow Home Loans
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla., Nov. 13, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- PHH Mortgage Corporation (“PHH” or the “Company”), a subsidiary of Ocwen Financial Corporation (NYSE: OCN) and a leading non-bank mortgage servicer and originator, today announced that it has entered into a mortgage subservicing agreement with Zillow Home Loans, LLC (“Zillow Home Loans”).

11/11/23

Thousands of veterans face foreclosure and it's not their fault. The VA could help Becky Queen remembers opening the letter with the foreclosure notice. "My heart dropped," she said, "and my hands were shaking." Queen lives on a small farm in rural Oklahoma with her husband, Ray, and their two young kids. Ray is a U.S. Army veteran who was wounded in Iraq. Since the 1940s, the federal government has helped veterans like him buy homes through its VA loan program, run by the Department of Veterans Affairs. But now the VA has put this family on the brink of losing their house. "I didn't do anything wrong," says Ray Queen. "The only thing I did was trust a company that I'm supposed to trust with my mortgage."

11/08/23

Five Star Announces Launch of Mortgage Servicing Executive Alliance
The Five Star Institute, parent company of MortgagePoint, has announced the launch of a mortgage industry trade group—the Mortgage Servicing Executive Alliance (MSEA). Intended as a forum to facilitate progress, collaboration, mentorship, and networking for mortgage industry executives, the MSEA joins Five Star’s National Mortgage Servicing Association (NMSA) as a group that represents thought leadership and best practices in mortgage servicing.

11/08/23

Report: During Spring Banking Crisis, Banks Borrowed Over $1 Trillion from Federal Home Loan Banks — $100 Billion More than During the Crash of 2008
Yesterday, the regulator of the Federal Home Loan Bank system, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), released a report on its recommended changes going forward. The report was in response to the questionable conduct of the Federal Home Loan Banks in the leadup to the banking crisis this past spring.

11/07/23

Bond-market crash leaves big banks with $650 billion of unrealized losses as the ghost of SVB continues to haunt Wall Street

• Big banks are sitting on $650 billion of unrealized losses, Moody's has estimated.
• It's a sign even Wall Street's best-known names are feeling the heat from the Treasury-market rout.
• Crashing bond prices sank Silicon Valley Bank earlier this year, and there may be more chaos to come.

11/07/23

Mortgage & HELOC Balances, Delinquencies, Foreclosures: How Are our Drunken Sailors Holding Up?
Mortgage balances outstanding ticked up 1.0% in Q3 from Q2, to a new record of $12.1 trillion, after having dipped in Q2, according to data from the New York Fed’s Household Debt and Credit Report. This increase is less than half the pace than the big jumps during the era of the 3% mortgages, when mortgage balances had soared quarter-to-quarter by as much as 2.8% in Q2 2021.

11/03/23

What's Worrying New York's Banking Regulators? Plenty, Including CRE Loans
New York’s top financial regulator — Adrienne Harris, director of the state’s Department of Financial Services — has been vocal about a number of issues, including cryptocurrency regulation and better and faster bank oversight. And the state of CRE loans. Harris stated in a recent Bloomberg TV interview that the “banking system is very stable” after the actions federal regulators took in March, closing several banks like Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic Bank in California and Signature Bank in New York. But then she added that “there’s still lots of issues looming,” like risks from interest high interest rates, attending unrealized losses, and exposure to commercial real estate loans. “So, the regional banking crisis, I think, is over,” Harris added. “The banks are stabilized, but certainly we’re mindful of other risks in the system.”

11/03/23

HELOC, Broker Pricing, LOS, Servicing Retention Products; Training and Webinars; STRATMOR on Tech
The upcoming credit price changes were not discussed yesterday at the counter in Paul’s Pancake Parlor here in Missoula, but they might have been. As well as the resignation of NAR’s CEO… are there cracks in the powerful NAR empire? One thing that did come up was the commercial real estate market, reminding us that people need a place to live, not necessarily a place to work. Want to know how bad the commercial real estate market may become? Follow the money.

11/03/23

FHA publishes proposed reverse mortgage servicing guidance to Single Family Drafting Table
The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) this week published a new draft version of a Mortgagee Letter (ML) containing a series of proposed changes to the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) program to the Single Family Drafting Table, an online portal designed to gather stakeholder input on proposed guidance before implementation. The new draft ML primarily contains proposed changes focused on reverse mortgage servicing. Stakeholder feedback is due by Nov. 7.

11/02/23

Vesta and Willow Servicing Partner to Forge a Seamless Bridge Between Origination and Servicing, Paving the Way for an End-to-End Digitized Mortgage Process
SAN FRANCISCO, November 02, 2023--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Vesta, the creator of the modern mortgage loan origination system, is pleased to announce its integration with Willow Servicing. This partnership marks a significant step toward harmonizing traditionally segmented origination and servicing processes. It provides seamless, end-to-end connectivity from application through post-close, all within the LOS.

11/02/23

ICE’s mortgage business outperforms in Q3 despite industry headwinds
ICE's improved adjusted operating income of $131M in Q3 was driven by strong sales in its Encompass loan origination, MSP solutions systems

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