Posts from — January 2011

Flip Your Sales Chart

by Coester

Jeffrey Gitomer The “Ace of Sales” 704-333-1112 (o) 310 Arlington Ave. Office Loft 329 Charlotte, NC 28203 ...

January 20, 2011 No Comments

Ally Financial to withdraw Maryland foreclosures signed by Jeffrey Stephan

by Coester

By Dina ElBoghdady and Ariana Eunjung Cha Washington Post Staff Writers Ally Financial, one of the nation's largest lenders, said Tuesday that it is withdrawing all of its foreclosures in Maryland that were approved by employee Jeffrey Stephan, the "robo-signer" who admitted he signed off on thousands of files every month with little or no review. The company, formerly known as GMAC, said about 250 active cases signed by Stephan will be dismissed and resubmitted in Maryland, a potentially len...

January 19, 2011 No Comments

Mortgage Apps Up Again in MBA Weekly Survey

by Coester

Key, Melissa -MBA NewsLink Mortgage application activity, helped by steady mortgage rates, improved for the third consecutive week, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported this morning in its Weekly Application Survey for the week ending Jan. 14. The Market Composite Index increased by 5.0 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier. On an unadjusted basis, the Index increased by 6.4 percent compared to the previous week. The four-week moving average rose by 1.4 percent...

January 19, 2011 1 Comment

Federal officials studying how to protect housing market

by Coester

By Zachary A. Goldfarb Washington Post Staff Writer Federal officials took two steps Tuesday to attempt to reduce the likelihood of a second financial crisis caused in large part by large declines in the housing market. The first would try to tackle the problem of foreclosures. The Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees the massive mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, said it would consider a new approach to how home loans are managed by banks. Critics say the cu...

January 19, 2011 1 Comment

FHFA, HUD Form Joint Initiative on Alternative Mortgage Servicing Comp Structure

by Coester

Sorohan, Mike -MBA Newslink The Federal Housing Finance Agency announced yesterday that it has directed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to work on a joint initiative, in coordination with HUD, to consider alternatives for future mortgage servicing structures and servicing compensation for their single-family mortgage loans. The announcement comes as the Mortgage Bankers Association convenes its Summit on Residential Mortgage Servicing for the 21st Century this morning in Washington. More than 2...

January 19, 2011 No Comments

Total Mortgage Identifies Key Trends in the Mortgage Marketplace in 2011

by Coester

MILFORD, CONNECTICUT - (January 11, 2011), Total Mortgage Services, LLC, a leading national mortgage lender featuring some of the lowest mortgage rates available, today highlighted five key trends likely to impact the mortgage industry and housing market in 2011. "The mortgage and housing markets continue to be impacted by the housing crisis, which has fundamentally and permanently altered these businesses," commented John Walsh, President of Total Mortgage Services. "In 2011, we expect the m...

January 18, 2011 1 Comment

FHFA: Mortgage Servicing Fees Won’t Change Before Mid-2012

by Coester

By Andrew Johnson and Cheyenne Hopkins -American Banker The Federal Housing Finance Agency confirmed that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are exploring possible changes to mortgage servicer compensation, and said implementation is unlikely before the summer of 2012. The current model, in which servicers collect a minimum percentage of the loan balance annually, paid out of the interest stream, "decreases the flexibility necessary for optimal servicing of non-performing loans," the FHFA said Tue...

January 18, 2011 No Comments

FDIC Refines Guidance on How Dodd-Frank Affects ABS

by Coester

By Anusha Shrivastava -Dow Jones Seeking to quell concerns that Dodd-Frank legislation could undermine loans underpinning billions of dollars in bonds, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said it will operate for at least six months as if the new rules have no effect on how the collateral backing the bonds is treated if the issuing entity fails. The FDIC provided this clarification in a letter to the American Securitization Forum, a trade group. The letter, reviewed by Dow Jones Newswires,...

January 18, 2011 1 Comment

Treasury May Offer Options, Shy Away from Specifics, in GSE Plan

by Coester

By Donna Borak -American Banker The Treasury Department's continued silence on its pending plan for the future of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is fueling suspicion that the administration does not have a concrete proposal. Instead, analysts, industry representatives and academics are increasingly convinced that the White House will offer guiding principles outlining its philosophy on the government-sponsored enterprises and potentially offering some alternatives vetted by the Treasury on how...

January 18, 2011 No Comments

Housing Industry Readies Mortgage Tax Break Fight

by Coester

by Steve Kerch -RISMEDIA The housing industry is girding for a fight in Congress to protect the mortgage interest deduction, along with a number of other housing-related tax breaks. The National Association of Home Builders is putting a high priority on lobbying in favor of the mortgage interest deduction, along with breaks such as the capital-gains exclusion on home sales, and has already created a website, http://www.savemymortgageinterestdeduction.com, to begin rallying public support behi...

January 18, 2011 1 Comment

Housing Moving to Higher Ground in 2011

by Coester

-RISMEDIA Housing will see gradual improvements in activity this year as the nation’s economy and job market continue to move to higher ground, establishing momentum that will produce more considerable gains in 2012, according to economists who appeared at the NAHB International Builders’ Show in Orlando on January 12. “This year’s spring selling season will be better than last year’s,” said NAHB Chief Economist David Crowe, with job growth providing a stronger stimulus in th...

January 18, 2011 No Comments

Fed Labors to Get Its Message Out

by Coester

By SUDEEP REDDY -Wall Street Journal Federal Reserve officials, who meet next week to ponder monetary policy, have signaled they aim to stick with Chairman Ben Bernanke's plan to buy $600 billion in long-term U.S. Treasury bonds. But they are struggling to find a coherent way to explain that—and other touchy issues they face in coming months—to the public. Mr. Bernanke has promoted more open discussion of policy issues, both inside the Fed and outside, in contrast to predecessors Alan ...

January 18, 2011 No Comments

Obama Launches Rule Review, Pledging to Spur Jobs, Growth

by Coester

by Elizabeth Williamson -The Wall Street Journal President Barack Obama plans a government-wide review of federal regulations, aiming to eliminate rules that stymie economic growth. In an article published in the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Obama said he intends to issue an executive order initiating a review to "make sure we avoid excessive, inconsistent and redundant regulation," focusing on rules that "stifle job creation and make our economy less competitive." He also s...

January 18, 2011 2 Comments

Fed Survey Sees Easing of Terms in Wholesale Credit Market

by Coester

Major U.S. banks provided more favorable financing to hedge funds and other large institutional investors as demand in the wholesale credit markets improved in the closing months of 2010, the Federal Reserve said Thursday. The Fed said in its quarterly Senior Credit Officer Opinion survey that the 20 major banks taking part in the survey attributed the changes to the continued improvement in financial markets broadly. "More-aggressive competition from other institutions and an improvement ...

January 17, 2011 No Comments

Auditors See Rising Defaults in Rural Loans

by Coester

By WILLIAM NEUMAN -The New York Times Seeking to buoy a strained rural economy in the midst of the recession, Congress ordered up a huge increase in federal mortgage guarantees for small-town home buyers as part of the 2009 economic stimulus package. The response from lenders was immediate. The value of federally backed rural home loans soared to $16.2 billion in fiscal 2009, up from just $3.7 billion two years earlier. Last year, the guarantees reached nearly $16.8 billion. Now, a newl...

January 14, 2011 No Comments

Big Lenders May Lose Under Plan for Simpler Mortgage Disclosure

by Coester

By Carter Dougherty -Bloomberg The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said it will soon begin writing and testing a simplified mortgage-disclosure form aimed at making it easier for borrowers to compare deals from different lenders. The bureau expects by the end of the month to award a contract to develop the form, making it one of the first projects of the new agency, according to a bidding document given to vendors in November and reviewed by Bloomberg News. More concise disclosure ...

January 14, 2011 1 Comment

Policymakers Ask: Should Government Fuel Small Biz Lending, or Get Out of the Way?

by Coester

By Joe Adler -American Banker WASHINGTON — With small-business credit still sluggish, policymakers and industry representatives spent much of a Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. forum Thursday debating whether government could find a solution, or was itself part of the problem. Regulatory officials insisted credit can flow amid heightened supervision and still-declining real estate values. They urged lenders to do more holistic underwriting, and not rely on a borrower's collateral values ...

January 14, 2011 2 Comments

Subprime Flashback Underscores Jumbo Lender’s Balancing Act

by Coester

By Kate Berry -American Banker Some mortgage brokers must have wondered for a moment if they were in a time warp when they received an email Tuesday from their Bank of Internet USA account executive. "No Job, No Income, No Problem!" read the first line, sounding like a subprime sales pitch from the heady days of 2005. Of course, the product advertised isn't as easily obtained as the infamous stated-income loans of yore, which dispensed with traditional documentation. As the email we...

January 13, 2011 No Comments

In their fight with banks over mortgage losses, investors get on borrowers’ side

by Coester

By Ariana Eunjung Cha and Dina ElBoghdady Washington Post Staff Writers The fight between big banks and investors who lost a fortune on mortgage-backed securities is shifting from private litigation to the public arena. While the investors have been angry at the banks for several years for the losses, their legal efforts have not gotten far, mostly because of the difficulty of organizing enough peers for class-action lawsuits and of prying information from the lenders. But the recent up...

January 13, 2011 1 Comment

Concern Over Defaulting Reverse Mortgages

by Coester

By Brian Collins and Brad Finkelstein -American Banker Mortgage bankers and the National Council on Aging are working on a pilot program to help older borrowers with reverse mortgages who have fallen behind on paying their property taxes and homeowners insurance. Failure to pay taxes and insurance can result in a technical default on reverse mortgages and lead to foreclosure, though actual foreclosures, to date, have been rare. But with large regional declines in property values — esp...

January 12, 2011 1 Comment

Fannie, Freddie Said to Weigh Servicing Fee Overhaul

by Coester

By Jeff Horwitz -American Banker For decades, mortgage servicers handling Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans have been paid a set minimum rate for every dollar of performing loans they tend. That rate, currently a quarter of 1%, is the foundation for the industry's compensation structure, hedging and accounting, and the right to collect it makes up a hefty portion of the largest banks' balance sheets. But like other institutionalized elements of the business, the 25-basis-point fee may soon ...

January 12, 2011 No Comments

Goldman Vows to Be More Open About Its Business

by Coester

By BEN PROTESS and SUSANNE CRAIG -The New York Times Brendan Mcdermid/ReutersGoldman Sachs has pledged to shed more light on how it makes money — a move that came in response to criticism that the firm has put its own interests ahead of those of its clients. Goldman Sachs pledged on Tuesday to shed more light on how it makes money — a move that follows months of mounting scrutiny. As a start, Goldman retooled its financial results for the third quarter, giving better insight into ho...

January 12, 2011 No Comments

11 Predictions for AMC Liability Risks in 2011

by Coester

By Peter Christensen We are looking forward to another challenging year in the business of insuring and defending claims in the appraisal industry. Based on both existing trends and new emerging issues, these are LIA Administrators & Insurance Services' predictions for the biggest liability risks that we expect for appraisal management companies in 2011: Several AMCs will be sued by the FDIC. Hundreds of appraisers are currently involved in lawsuits or threatened with liti...

January 11, 2011 2 Comments

PFM Data Is Getting Lost in Translation

by Coester

By Jeremy Quittner American Banker "Show me the money" is not as simple a request as it once was. As banks add personal financial management tools to their websites, the new data can garble the feeds they provide to third-party PFM companies, giving consumers an inaccurate view of their overall finances. For example, after PNC Financial Services Group Inc. expanded its Virtual Wallet PFM account to include credit card data, some tools interpreted at least one customer's card balance a...

January 11, 2011 No Comments

Mortgage Assumption Turned on Its Ear as Refi, Purchase Costs Converge

by Coester

By Sara Lepro American Banker It used to be axiomatic that it was cheaper for a lender to refinance a homeowner's mortgage than to originate a purchase loan. Now it's debatable. Broadly speaking, costs to produce either kind of mortgage are higher today than a few years ago, mostly because of increased regulation. And the common belief is still that it is more expensive to acquire a customer for a purchase loan than a refi, since purchase loans require more marketing. But when it comes t...

January 11, 2011 No Comments

Job Market Uncertainty in Fourth Quarter, Survey Says

by Coester

Murray, Michael MBA News Despite some optimism, employees remained pessimistic about pay raises and the job market became more uncertain during the fourth quarter, a recent survey said. During the fourth quarter, employees were more confident in their job security and their company’s outlook for the next six months than in the third quarter, said a fourth quatrter Employment Confidence Survey from Glassdoor.com, Sausalito, Calif. However, while cutbacks in other areas declined or rema...

January 11, 2011 No Comments

FHA Revises November Delinquency Rate

by Coester

By Brian Collins American Banker The Federal Housing Administration has revised the November seriously delinquent rate for FHA-insured single family loans down to 8.34%. The agency originally had reported that 8.7% of its loans were 90 days or more past due, up from 8% in October. The information appears in its "FHA Single-Family Outlook" report. When queried about the rise, FHA officials said the October rate is "artificially low" because two lenders that service 3% of FHA loans did n...

January 11, 2011 No Comments

Judges Berate Bank Lawyers in Foreclosures

by Coester

By JOHN SCHWARTZ The New York Times With judges looking ever more critically at home foreclosures, they are reaching beyond the bankers to heap some of their most scorching criticism on the lawyers. In numerous opinions, judges have accused lawyers of processing shoddy or even fabricated paperwork in foreclosure actions when representing the banks. Judge Arthur M. Schack of New York State Supreme Court in Brooklyn has taken aim at an upstate lawyer, Steven J. Baum, referring to one fili...

January 11, 2011 No Comments

Fed returned $78.4 billion to Treasury

by Coester

The Washington Post The Federal Reserve paid a record $78.4 billion in earnings to the government last year, reflecting gains from the central bank's unconventional efforts to lift the economy. The payment to the Treasury is the largest since the Fed began operating in 1914. It surpasses the previous record $47.4 billion paid in 2009, the Fed said Monday. The bigger payment mostly came from more income generated by the Fed's massive portfolio of securities, which includes Treasury debt ...

January 11, 2011 No Comments

MBA Letter Voices ‘Deep Concern’ Over Proposed Combined Servicing/Risk Retention Standards

by Coester

Sorohan, Mike -MBA News The Mortgage Bankers Association yesterday sent a strongly worded letter to federal regulators, expressing "deep concern" regarding recent letters calling on regulators to create national residential mortgage servicing standards as part of a fast-track risk retention rulemaking under the Dodd-Frank Act. MBA said combining risk retention requirements with national servicing standards under Section 941 of the Dodd-Frank Act "runs the risk of giving short shrift to two...

January 11, 2011 No Comments

If Your Bank Is Failing, Should You Take Files to Protect Yourself?

by Coester

Joe Adler -American Banker As directors and officers of failed banks brace for Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. lawsuits, an intense legal battle is developing over accessing files at their former institutions. Before regulators locked the doors, board members and senior officers at numerous troubled banks made copies of their institution's internal documents, which included sensitive customer information, and fed them to outside defense teams to prepare for potential litigation. But no...

January 11, 2011 No Comments

FDIC Aims to Stay Focused as It Moves Beyond Crisis

by Coester

Joe Adler -American Banker For the past two years, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has maintained a consistent crisis-response posture — bulking up its manpower, swooping in to resolve failed institutions and standing behind their depositors. But the FDIC will undoubtedly need to pivot in a new direction in 2011. With failures slowing, an agency that has been in constant overdrive will face a fresh set of challenges as it begins to apply the brakes. The last time the agency downsi...

January 10, 2011 No Comments

Washington People: Target: Dodd-Frank

by Coester

By Rob Blackwell and Donna Borak and Joe Adler -American Banker Hard-core opponents of the Dodd-Frank Act wasted no time staking out their revolt against it last week. After being sworn into the new Congress Wednesday, Tea Party icon Rep. Michele Bachmann introduced legislation to repeal the law. "I'm pleased to offer a full repeal of the job-killing Dodd-Frank financial regulatory bill," the Minnesota Republican said. "Dodd-Frank grossly expanded the federal government beyond its jurisdictio...

January 10, 2011 No Comments

Survey Reveals Americans Not Financially Fit for Retirement

by Coester

by Kelly Mellott The Sixth Annual Retirement Fitness Survey, conducted by Wells Fargo and Company, has revealed that nearly three out of every four working, middle-class Americans (72 percent) between the ages of 25 to 69 expect to work through their retirement years. Reasons for this response included a deep deficit in personal retirement savings and a lifestyle choice. Survey respondents answered that they have saved less than seven percent of their desired retirement nest egg. The surve...

January 10, 2011 No Comments

Consumer Groups, Lawmakers Press Fed to Withdraw TILA Plan

by Coester

By Donna Borak -American Banker Consumer groups and top members of the Senate Banking Committee are pressing the Federal Reserve Board to withdraw a plan they claim would eliminate a critical tool for homeowners to get out of risky mortgages. The central bank issued a proposal in September to amend the Truth in Lending Act that would, among many other things, revise the so-called right of rescission, which allows borrowers to rescind a loan within three years that fails to comply with di...

January 7, 2011 No Comments

PayPal Tries Cloud Cover to Fend Off Further Attacks

by Coester

By Sean Sposito -American Banker PayPal Inc. weathered last month's Internet attacks better than most of its rivals, but it still has been more outspoken than anyone else about its need for improvement. To that end, PayPal is expanding its use of cloud computing. "We have a lot of defenses in place. When this happened, we put additional defenses in, in a very fast manner," said Anuj Nayar, a PayPal spokesman. "Major cloud providers have incredible amounts of bandwidth." In early Dece...

January 7, 2011 No Comments

‘We’re Not Them’: MetLife Recruiting in Mortgages

by Coester

By Kate Berry -American Banker Brian Hale, MetLife Bank's president of mortgage banking, says he wants to make the lender a "material competitor" to the top four. He has his work cut out for him. After all, MetLife ranks 15th among home loan originators, with a 1% share, in a market where the top four write more than half of all the business. But Hale says MetLife has an advantage, at least when it comes to recruitment: considerably less baggage. Unlike many of the large banks, MetL...

January 7, 2011 No Comments

Top 10 Reasons Small Businesses Fail

by Coester

AY GOLTZ, On Wednesday January 5, 2011, 2:05 pm EST One of the least understood aspects of entrepreneurship is why small businesses fail, and there's a simple reason for the confusion: Most of the evidence comes from the entrepreneurs themselves. I have had a close-up view of numerous business failures -- including a few start-ups of my own. And from my observation, the reasons for failure cited by the owners are frequently off-point, which kind of makes sense when you think about it. If the...

January 6, 2011 No Comments

Coester Appraisal Group Offers 50% off of the Reverse Mortgage ValueSafe Program for the Entire Month of January

by Coester

Discount will focus on offering a low-cost alternative to both lenders and borrowers alike January 4, 2010—Rockville, MD—Coester Appraisal Group, a nationwide appraisal management company has announced 50% off of the first ValueSafe appraisal order in the month of January. The ValueSafe appraisal program-which has been featured in stories on Reverse Mortgage Daily and National Mortgage News- allows lenders to place an order for a “desktop” or “limited scope” appraisal, report to a l...

January 6, 2011 No Comments

The Sum of All Eviction Fears

by Coester

-John Clapp MortgageOrb.com While scanning mortgage headlines the other morning, I was stopped in my tracks by one particularly eye-grabbing claim: "Families Exchange Homes to Stop Foreclosure." Immediately, I recalled a story that made the rounds last summer. You might remember the one: While cleaning out their home, a family facing foreclosure found a highly valuable Superman comic book - Action Comics No. 1. That comic - apparently a collector's dream item - was later auctioned for $436,0...

January 5, 2011 No Comments

The Perils of Being Anti-Social

by Coester

By Harvey Mackay "Is social media a fad or is it the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution?" asks Erik Qualman, author of Socialnomics. Consider these statistics he presents, and my analysis of them, and then decide how connected you should be. Hint: Your company website alone is no longer enough! As of 2010, Generation Y -- those born between 1980 and 2000 -- outnumbers baby boomers. And 96 percent of them have joined a social network! There was no initiation, no dues, no re...

January 5, 2011 No Comments

Mortgage Servicing Poised to Become Front-Burner Issue for Congress

by Coester

By Stacy Kaper American Banker While much of the next Congress will focus on making changes to the Dodd-Frank Act, lawmakers are also likely to deal with problems in mortgage servicing. The robo-signing scandal this fall emerged too late for lawmakers to tackle in legislation, and while House Republicans may be reluctant to take it on, mounting litigation over the legality of foreclosure proceedings could force the issue. The key question is whether lawmakers or regulators will try to craft ...

January 4, 2011 1 Comment

CFPB Signs Cooperation Agreement with States

by Coester

By Cheyenne Hopkins American Banker The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau signed a memorandum of understanding on Tuesday with state banking regulators to coordinate supervision and implementation of consumer protection rules. The MOU marks the first formal coordination effort between the states and CFPB, which will split supervision of state-chartered banks with more than $10 billion of assets and non-depository financial institutions. "Starting today we will work together to promot...

January 4, 2011 No Comments

CFPB Signs Cooperation Agreement with States

by Coester

January 4, 2011 No Comments

Home Lenders Face a Smaller, Purchase-Driven Market

by Coester

By Sara Lepro Mortgage servicing flaws and banks' efforts to correct them garnered much attention last year. Less obvious has been the need for process improvements on the origination side of the business. In 2011, lenders must retool their loan-production engines and strive for greater efficiencies, observers say, in an environment of less volume, more regulation, fewer loan products and tougher competition. The market's changing dynamics will require a more nimble operation, one that is dif...

January 4, 2011 No Comments

Why Baby Boomers Are Bummed Out

by Coester

By Rick Newman U.S. News The economy's finally bouncing back, and many Americans are starting to feel a bit more optimistic. But the nation's biggest population group remains in a recessionary funk. The first of the baby boomers--the post-war Americans born between 1946 and 1965--start to hit retirement age in 2011. And they're not coasting gracefully into the golden years. The entire nation, of course, lost its spunk during the recession that lasted from 2007 to 2009. But the once-upbeat b...

January 4, 2011 3 Comments

Fed’s Broker Pay Rule Could Spell Bonus for Big Banks

by Coester

By Kate Berry Large banks could end up pocketing higher profit margins on residential mortgages this year because of a rule from the Federal Reserve that restricts the pay of brokers and loan officers. The rule also could cull the ranks of wholesale mortgage brokers — some lenders predict by up to 20% — particularly if brokers end up earning a flat fee or set amount per loan. Such a shift could drive small producers out of the industry and lower overall compensation, though many are still ...

January 4, 2011 2 Comments

Baby Boomers Near 65 with Retirement in Jeporady

by Coester

CHICAGO - Through a combination of procrastination and bad timing, many baby boomers are facing a personal finance disaster just as they're hoping to retire. Starting in January, more than 10,000 baby boomers a day will turn 65, a pattern that will continue for the next 19 years. The boomers, who in their youth revolutionized everything from music to race relations, are set to redefine retirement. But a generation that made its mark in the tumultuous 1960s now faces a crisis as it hits its ow...

January 3, 2011 No Comments