modifications - FORECLOSURE FRAUD

Tag Archive | "modifications"

MERS BULLETIN: Re-Title the Transfer to Non-MERS Member, MERS® ServicerID Modifications, Borrower SS# Needed for Investor Disclosure…etc.

MERS BULLETIN: Re-Title the Transfer to Non-MERS Member, MERS® ServicerID Modifications, Borrower SS# Needed for Investor Disclosure…etc.


The MERS® System is being enhanced effective September 6, 2011.

Existing batch interfaces that you or your technology provider may have installed will continue to function properly, but you must use the new file layouts to take advantage of the enhanced functionality. Some report file layouts have changed.

[ipaper docId=64182385 access_key=key-derj4j31q6um70iis5k height=600 width=600 /]

© 2010-19 FORECLOSURE FRAUD | by DinSFLA. All rights reserved.



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BAC Settlement and Fannie’s Recent Announcement Prohibiting Servicers From Settling with Mortgage Insurers

BAC Settlement and Fannie’s Recent Announcement Prohibiting Servicers From Settling with Mortgage Insurers


Question:

Did Fannie Mae issue the recent announcement [see below] prohibiting servicers from settling reps and warranties claims with Mortgage insurers specifically because BAC /Countrywide just settled with one of their big insurers AND took back 80% of the loss.

From SeekingAlpha

The cash settlement of $1.1 billion will be paid in full by March 31, 2012. The initial payment of $850 million was paid on April 14, 2011. In addition, Bank of America and Countrywide have agreed to a reinsurance arrangement that will reimburse Assured Guaranty for 80% of all paid losses on the 21 first lien RMBS transactions until aggregate collateral losses in those transactions exceed $6.6 billion. Cumulative collateral losses on these transactions were approximately $1.3 billion with no paid losses by Assured Guaranty as of December 31, 2010. As of December 31, 2010, Assured Guaranty’s gross economic loss on these RMBS transactions, which assumes cumulative projected collateral losses of $4.6 billion, was $490 million. The total estimated value of the settlement is expected to be accretive to shareholders’ equity and adjusted book value, a non-GAAP financial measure.

Now lets see… Could BAC possibly pass the losses on to the govt. for the Fannie and Freddie guaranteed securities and is this why Fannie is trying to put her foot down with this letter below and say that the servicers do NOT have the authority to make such deals with the insurers, causing the GSE’s to eat the losses that the servicers are blithely bargaining away.

Meanwhile the deal has already been struck and partially paid. Will taxpayers be on the hook for yet another disastrous toxic originating love story?

Did BAC breach any fiduciary responsibilities with Fannie?

[ipaper docId=53095767 access_key=key-1wd6kmoow89ycd06lprq height=600 width=600 /]

© 2010-19 FORECLOSURE FRAUD | by DinSFLA. All rights reserved.



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ANNOUNCEMENT | Fannie Mae Prohibits Loss Sharing, Indemnification, and Settlement Agreements Between Servicers and Mortgage Insurers

ANNOUNCEMENT | Fannie Mae Prohibits Loss Sharing, Indemnification, and Settlement Agreements Between Servicers and Mortgage Insurers


Effective immediately, Fannie Mae is prohibiting servicers from entering into any agreement that modifies the terms of an approved mortgage insurance master policy on loans delivered to Fannie Mae. Prohibited agreements include, but are not limited to, agreements that directly or indirectly

  • modify master policy provisions for settling of claims,
  • limit the right of a mortgage insurer to conduct file reviews or investigate claims,
  • limit the right of a mortgage insurer to rescind coverage,
  • rescind or modify coverage, or
  • restrict notice to Fannie Mae of changes in coverage status.

Further, Fannie Mae prohibits loss sharing, indemnification, settlement or similar agreements of any kind between servicers and mortgage insurance companies that affect Fannie Mae’s interest in its mortgage loans.

[ipaper docId=53095767 access_key=key-1wd6kmoow89ycd06lprq height=600 width=600 /]

© 2010-19 FORECLOSURE FRAUD | by DinSFLA. All rights reserved.



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Congressional Oversight Panel: HAMP FAILED YOU, SERVICERS CONFLICTS

Congressional Oversight Panel: HAMP FAILED YOU, SERVICERS CONFLICTS


Congressional Oversight Panel Reviews Treasury’s Foreclosure Prevention Programs
HAMP On Track to Prevent Far Fewer Foreclosures Than Expected, but Treasury Can Still Take Steps to Help More Homeowners Avoid Foreclosure

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 14, 2010

Thomas Seay
Thomas_Seay@cop.senate.gov
202-224-9979

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Congressional Oversight Panel today released its December oversight report, “A Review of Treasury’s Foreclosure Prevention Programs.” In the eight months since the Panel’s last report on the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), Treasury has made minor tweaks to the program, but the changes have not resolved the Panel’s core concerns. The Panel now estimates that, if current trends hold, HAMP will prevent only 700,000 foreclosures – far fewer than the three to four million foreclosures that Treasury initially aimed to stop, and vastly fewer than the eight to 13 million foreclosures expected by 2012.

While HAMP’s most dramatic shortcoming has been its poor results in preventing foreclosures, the program has had other significant flaws. For example, despite repeated urgings from the Panel, Treasury has failed to collect and analyze data that would explain HAMP’s shortcomings, and it does not even have a way to collect data for many of HAMP’s add-on programs. Further, Treasury has refused to specify meaningful goals by which to measure HAMP’s progress, while the program’s sole initial goal – to prevent three to four million foreclosures – has been repeatedly redefined and watered down.

Treasury has failed to hold loan servicers accountable when they have repeatedly lost borrower paperwork or refused to perform loan modifications. Treasury has essentially outsourced the responsibility for overseeing servicers to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but Freddie Mac in particular has hesitated to enforce some of its contractual rights related to the foreclosure process, arguing that doing so “may negatively impact our relationships with these seller/servicers, some of which are among our largest sources of mortgage loans.” Treasury bears the ultimate responsibility for preventing such conflicts of interest, and it should ensure that loan servicers are penalized when they fail to complete loan modifications appropriately.

It is too late for Treasury to revamp its foreclosure prevention strategy, but Treasury can still take steps to wring every possible benefit from its programs. Treasury should enable borrowers to apply for loan modifications more easily – for example, by allowing online applications. Treasury should also carefully monitor and, where appropriate, intervene in cases in which borrowers are falling behind on their HAMP-modified mortgages. Preventing redefaults is an extremely powerful way of magnifying HAMP’s impact, as each redefault prevented translates directly into a borrower keeping his home.

Treasury should acknowledge that HAMP will not reach the expected number of homeowners and should provide a meaningful framework for evaluating the program in the future. Treasury continues to state that HAMP will expend $30 billion in Troubled Asset Relief Program funding, yet the Panel’s estimate based on Congressional Budget Office figures is that HAMP will likely spend only around $4 billion. Had Treasury acknowledged this reality before its crisis authority expired, it could have reallocated the money to a more effective program. Now, that option is gone. Absent a dramatic and unexpected increase in HAMP enrollment, many billions of dollars set aside for foreclosure mitigation may well be left unused. As a result, an untold number of borrowers may go without help – all because Treasury failed to acknowledge HAMP’s shortcomings in time.

The full report is available at cop.senate.gov.

The Congressional Oversight Panel was created to oversee the expenditure of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds authorized by Congress in the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (EESA) and to provide recommendations on regulatory reform. The Panel members are former Senator Ted Kaufman; J. Mark McWatters; Richard H. Neiman, Superintendent of Banks for the State of New York; Damon Silvers, Policy Director and Special Counsel for the AFL-CIO; and Kenneth Troske, William B. Sturgill Professor of Economics at the University of Kentucky.

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© 2010-19 FORECLOSURE FRAUD | by DinSFLA. All rights reserved.



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Mortgage Servicers Blast Administration’s Homeowner Aid Program

Mortgage Servicers Blast Administration’s Homeowner Aid Program


First Published Thursday, 24 June 2010 09:21 pm
Copyright © 2010 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

(Updates with comments from Treasury official.)

By Darrell A. Hughes

Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- Mortgage servicers on Thursday told U.S. House lawmakers that consecutive changes to the U.S. Treasury Department’s foreclosure prevention program have made it increasingly difficult to keep distressed borrowers in their homes.

Real-estate financial services consultant Edward Pinto described the Home Affordable Modification Program in two words: “numbing complexity.”

“At last count, HAMP had 800 requirements and servicers are expected to certify compliance,” he said. “With ever changing regulations, a constant need to re-evaluate past decisions in light of new regulations, and multiple appeals, it is no wonder that the HAMP pipeline became clogged through no substantial fault of servicers.”

HAMP was created to help financially strained borrowers avoid foreclosure, but the program’s lackluster performance has been mired in controversy, as some lawmakers are questioning whether the program should remain ongoing.

On Thursday, members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held the second of two hearings to assess HAMP’s progress. This latest hearing primarily focused on what servicers are doing to ensure borrowers receive adequate relief.

Pinto, who served as Fannie Mae’s chief credit officer from 1987-1989, testified before the committee, along with J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.’s (JPM) head of home lending, David Lowman, and CitiMortgage Chief Executive Sanjiv Das. CitiMortgage is a unit of Citigroup Inc. (C). Bank of America (BAC) executive Barbara Desoer and Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) executive Michael Heid were among others who testified.

According to Treasury’s most recent data, nearly one out of four homeowners offered help under the program have fallen out of HAMP. About 1.2 million trial modifications had been started under the plan and about 281,000 homeowners had been dropped by the end of April.

Many borrowers were expecting a mortgage modification when they ultimately didn’t qualify, Wells Fargo’s Heid said, adding that a lack of income documentation and failure to make all of the trial modification payments were the primary reasons some borrowers failed to receive a permanent modification.

Heid echoed the frustration expressed by Pinto and provided lawmakers with a “partial list” of more than 20 changes to the program since its inception in February 2009. “This has contributed to a level of complexity that has been difficult for customers to understand and for services to communicate and execute,” he said.

At the first hearing in March, Herbert Allison, Treasury’s assistant secretary for financial stability, acknowledged the program has had issues, including problems at some mortgage servicers, the difficulty for some borrowers to provide needed documentation, and “a process that has proven more complex administratively than originally conceived.”

Allison, responding to criticism from servicers, said Treasury took “swift and unprecedented action” in creating HAMP, which called for servicers to be recruited, policies and guidance to be developed; and that’s in addition to “mounting a massive effort to reach homeowners.”

Allison defended the administration’s actions, saying “there was little precedent on how to design a modification program of the scale required and limited data on which to base estimates of potential performance.” He added, “There was no existing infrastructure in the mortgage finance market or the government to carry out a national modification program at a loan level.”

Assessing HAMP’s impact on the industry, Allison said the program has changed the fundamentals of servicer duties from “collecting payments and processing foreclosures, to one that provides payment assistance to qualified homeowners.”

Servicers who testifed before lawmakers made several positive remarks about the program providing relief to many Americans. Still, they remain concerned that HAMP fails to address the financial circumstances and hardships of all borrowers.

The mortgage servicers told lawmakers that HAMP isn’t the only option, and each of them outlined their respective plans to assist borrowers with in-house initiatives that could be tailored to the needs of specific borrowers.

Pinto projected that the overall success of HAMP is likely to negatively impacted by high re-default rates. Pinto’s permanent mortgage re-default rate forecast is ten percentage points below the 50% that’s been projected by other mortgage sector observers.

Pinto based his projection on two statistics: most HAMP permanent modifications being made on loans with mortgage balances in excess of current home values and borrowers that received a permanent modification through May 2010 having a median total debt-to-income ratio of 64%.

“This leaves little money for food, clothing, taxes and other expenses,” Pinto said. “As a result, these borrowers are a worn-out furnace or roof replacement away from re-default.”

-By Darrell A. Hughes, Dow Jones Newswires; 202-862-6684; darrell.hughes@dowjones.com

(Michael R. Crittenden and James R. Hagerty contributed to this story.)

© 2010-19 FORECLOSURE FRAUD | by DinSFLA. All rights reserved.



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Lawmakers slam top mortgage firms on loan mods

Lawmakers slam top mortgage firms on loan mods


(Updates with Treasury official Herb Allison’s comments)

By Corbett B. Daly

WASHINGTON June 24 (Reuters) – The four largest mortgage lenders in the United States were grilled on Capitol Hill on Thursday about the limited number of home loans they have modified for homeowners facing foreclosure.

“I just wonder how hard you are really trying?” Rep. Dennis Kucinich asked David Lowman, chief executive of home lending at JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N).

Lowman said JP Morgan had been understaffed to handle the demand from struggling homeowners seeking to restructure payments, though they have added staff in recent months.

“Why are you denying loan modifications to my constituents?” Kucinich, an Ohio Democrat, asked Lowman, calling JP Morgan Chase uncooperative with borrowers.

Ohio has been one of the hardest-hit states in the U.S. home foreclosure crisis.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee also summoned chief executives of the home lending units of Bank of America Corp (BAC.N), Citigroup Inc (C.N) and Wells Fargo & Co (WFC.N) to answer questions about their loan modification practices.

Also at the witness table was American Home Mortgage Servicing Inc, which collects loan payments but does not make or hold loans. AHMSI is known in the industry as a monoline servicer, while the other four firms both make and service loans.

In 2009, the Obama administration announced the $75 billion Home Affordable Modification Program, known as HAMP, which provides incentives to loan servicers to modify loans for troubled borrowers. HAMP has been widely criticized as ineffective. Less than $200 million has been spent to date.

The Treasury Department said on Monday more people had been kicked out of trial loan modifications than had received permanent modifications.

About 150,000 borrowers who could not prove their income or keep up with the new payments had their modifications canceled in May, bringing the total number of cancellations to about 430,000, or more than one-third of the 1.24 million trial modifications started since the program’s inception.

HAMP NOT THE ONLY SOLUTION

The number of borrowers who have received a permanent loan modification rose to 340,459 in May — about 11 percent of 3.2 million HAMP eligible loans.

“This is not just about HAMP,” the panel’s chairman, Edolphus Towns, said, referring to the modification program.

“I think the mortgage banking industry has got to recognize that HAMP cannot be the only solution to the mortgage foreclosure crisis,” the New York Democrat told the financial executives.

Herb Allison, assistant Treasury secretary for financial stability, noted that there was little precedent on how to design a large national program and the administration has now begun to put pressure on servicers to increase modifications by publicly releasing data on their performance.

“The HAMP program fundamentally changed the servicer industry from one based on collecting payments and processing foreclosures, to one that provides payment assistance to qualified homeowners,” Allison said in a prepared statement released after the hearing.

All of the executives said they have made more loan modifications than just HAMP modifications.

JP Morgan Chase said it has completed about 173,000 permanent modifications, including roughly 47,500 HAMP loans, since the beginning of 2009.

Bank of America said it has completed more than 630,000 loan modifications since January 2008, including roughly 70,000 HAMP loans.

Rep. Steve Driehaus, an Ohio Democrat, urged the executives to stop foreclosure proceedings while they negotiated new loan terms with borrowers.

“We are sending a very mixed message when we are proceeding with foreclosure while negotiating” a loan modification, Driehaus said.

Citi and Wells Fargo said they do stop foreclosure proceedings as soon as loan repayment talks begin. Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and AHMSI said they continue to pursue foreclosures on a dual track strategy, though foreclosure remains an option of last resort. (Reporting by Corbett B. Daly; Editing by Jan Paschal and Jeffrey Benkoe)

© 2010-19 FORECLOSURE FRAUD | by DinSFLA. All rights reserved.



Posted in bank of america, citi, foreclosure, foreclosure fraud, foreclosures, jpmorgan chase, mortgage modification, wells fargoComments (0)

Geithner tells panel that more has to be done to help homeowners avoid foreclosure: Washington Post

Geithner tells panel that more has to be done to help homeowners avoid foreclosure: Washington Post


SCROLL DOWN AND SEE WHAT THEY ADMIT… 

By Renae Merle

Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 30, 2010

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner told a Senate panel Thursday that mortgage lenders were still not doing enough to help homeowners avoid foreclosure and that some borrowers who qualify for federal aid are still losing their homes.Homeowners meet with Wells Fargo employees in makeshift offices at a workshop in Oakland to discuss mortgage payment challenges.

The industry’s performance varies by lender, he said, adding that the Treasury Department is conducting “targeted, in-depth compliance” reviews of lenders participating in the government’s foreclosure prevention program. Some firms could lose the incentive payments they earn for helping borrowers if their performance does not improve, he said.

“None of this is acceptable. We are committed to making sure that servicers hold up their end of the bargain,” Geithner said during a hearing of a Senate Appropriations subcommittee.

So far, the federal program, known as Making Home Affordable, has helped about 200,000 borrowers get a permanent loan modification. But the government is far short of helping the 3 million to 4 million homeowners it initially targeted. In the meantime, millions of homeowners are expected to fall into foreclosure over the next few years.

“I want to be clear that we do not believe [mortgage] servicers are doing enough to help homeowners, not doing enough to help them navigate the difficult and often frightening process of avoiding foreclosure,” Geithner told the committee. “They are not responding to the needs of responsible and increasingly desperate homeowners.” DinSFLA: So there are IRRESPONSIBLE ones?? Clarification, please Mr. Geithner…Who are the irresponsible ones “SIR” who got us in this Shit Hole of a mess??

Industry officials argue that they have helped millions of borrowers avoid foreclosure already, many outside the government program. “While we share the secretary’s continued frustration with anecdotes about lost paperwork and mistaken foreclosures, I don’t think blanket indictments of an entire industry are helpful,” said John A. Courson, president of the Mortgage Bankers Association. “Nevertheless, the industry is continuing to try and streamline and improve the loan modification process.”

Last month, the Treasury Department announced it was revamping the federal program, including by encouraging lenders to forgive a portion of a borrower’s mortgage debt if more is owed on the loan than the home is worth, a situation known as being underwater. Under the changes, lenders are now required to offer temporary mortgage relief to unemployed borrowers for at least three months.

But the government program is largely voluntary, and some lenders have already balked at the prospect of widespread use of principal forgiveness in which they would slash the mortgage balances of millions of homeowners. Also, housing advocates have argued that the help being offered to unemployed borrowers may not go far enough because it could take many much longer than three months to find a job.

“These changes won’t be implemented until the fall, maybe too little, too late,” said Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.).

Geithner also faced questions from committee members about the status of its bailout of the automakers, including General Motors and Chrysler. In a recent television ad, GM touted that it had repaid billions of dollars in government loans ahead of schedule.

But Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said that the commercial did not mention that taxpayers still own 61 percent of the company’s shares. “This is so frustrating to me because I believe the public is being misled,” Collins said.

Geithner said he was aware of concerns over GM’s claims in the commercial. “We still have substantial equity investments left in those companies, and as a result, some risk of loss, although a fraction of what we feared,” he said.

The administration wants to divest its interest in the automakers as soon as possible, Geithner said. There is a reasonable chance that all of the bailout funds given to the industry could be recovered.

“Nobody at GM has claimed victory. We know we have more work to do,” Greg Martin, a GM spokesman, said in an e-mail. “But early repayment of our loans is a milestone for the company and a clear sign that our plan is working, and a critical step toward returning GM to profitability and public ownership.”

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