October 2017

A handful of factors could soon convene to test just how good servicers’ default management processes and technologies have become.

What does “final” mean to you?     According to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, “final” means “not to be altered or undone.” It also means “coming at the end: being the last in a series, process or progress …” For most of us, interpretation of the word “final” is straightforward and intuitive: There’s a clear reason when [...]

Nobody likes remembering the “bad times.” But now that our industry is once again operating close to normal, with loan defaults down and housing prices continuing to trend up, it is easy to forget the painful lessons of the not-so-distant past. However, if we do, history is likely to repeat itself. We are already starting [...]

A bill that goes into effect this fall seems to have promise, but there are caveats.

A recent survey of mortgage servicers completed by the Collingwood Group and Five Star Institute, the Mortgage Industry Outlook Report, revealed that 39% of respondents from various levels of the housing finance industry named fulfillment of Federal Housing Administration (FHA) property preservation and conveyance requirements as their biggest FHA servicing challenge. The survey explained that [...]

Borrowers can now make mortgage payments online, over the phone, in person or by mailing a check. With so many payment options available, the question becomes, what’s the best payment option for servicers to extend to their borrowers? This is a trick question, of course: The best option is for your borrowers to have several [...]

When the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) released a sweeping series of amendments to its mortgage servicing rules last fall, some of the most significant changes dealt with the regulatory framework surrounding successors in interest. So sweeping, in fact, that the CFPB allowed servicers 18 months from the finalization of the rule amendments to implement [...]

Irma More Likely to Impact Mortgage Defaults Than Harvey Hurricane Irma, which struck Florida in early September, is more likely to result in a wave of early stage delinquencies and defaults than Hurricane Harvey, which hit the Houston area in late August, recent research from Black Knight shows. That’s because homeowners in the Houston area [...]