Ocwen Financial’s pending purchase of subprime servicer Saxon Mortgage is just the latest growth spurt for the firm. “We are looking at other transactions as we speak,” William Erbey, chairman of Ocwen, said last week on a call with investors. Even with the Saxon deal, Erbey said Ocwen’s pipeline of potential acquisitions increased in the third quarter of 2011 compared with the previous quarter, to more than $300.0 billion in unpaid principal balance. ...

The 14 servicers operating under consent orders with federal regulators started their independent foreclosure review programs this week. The consent orders and Home Affordable Modification Program guidelines each contained single point of contact requirements, with varying degrees of guidance. At the Mortgage Bankers Association’s recent annual conference in Chicago, Diane Pendley, a managing director at Fitch Ratings, said servicers have implemented SPOC guidelines in at least eight different ways. ...

In a somewhat unusual announcement last week, Walter Investment Management said it was servicing approximately 910,000 loans representing approximately $59.0 billion of unpaid principal balance as of the end of the third quarter of 2011. The announcement was unusual because that was the extent of the statement. “We believe the major increase in the servicing portfolio could be due to Walter being allocated a portion of the servicing rights related to the Fannie Mae/Bank of America deal, whereby Bank of America sold the servicing rights to 400,000 loans to Fannie Mae,” said analysts at FBR Capital Markets. ...

Acquisitions of large non-agency portfolios by Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase resulted in poor servicing performance, according to a new analysis by Moody’s Investors Service. Successful borrower-contact initiatives, meanwhile, resulted in significantly improved servicing performance for others. “Integrating the servicing platforms, employees, processes, and technologies into their servicing operations overwhelmed the banks, reducing their ability to proactively address the increased number of problem loans in their combined portfolios,” Moody’s said. ...

Investors in non-agency mortgage-backed securities would rather not fight in court to enforce buybacks, according to Talcott Franklin, shareholder of his namesake law firm. However, Franklin said litigation has been necessary because servicers – largely those affiliated with lenders or MBS issuers – have not done enough to prevent losses. “If the banks can get it together on the servicing side and try to reduce these losses, that is going to be the best way for them to proactively reduce these [buyback] risks,” he said this week during a webinar hosted by Inside Mortgage Finance Publications. ...

The servicing compensation structure for non-agency mortgages must be reformed, according to Federal Reserve Governor Sarah Bloom Raskin. The Federal Housing Finance Agency noted that the options it proposed for agency mortgages last week could also serve as a model for non-agency mortgages and could help revive the sector. “It is imperative to reconsider the compensation structure so that servicers have adequate incentives to perform payment processing efficiently on performing mortgages, and to perform effective loss mitigation on delinquent loans,” Raskin said in a speech this week. ...

Use of principal reduction in loan modifications increased in the second quarter of 2011, according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Principal reduction has gained popularity for non-agency mortgages after initially being used almost exclusively on portfolio loans. Some 8,645 principal reduction mods were completed by major banks and thrifts in the second quarter of 2011, according to the OCC. Non-agency mortgages accounted for 48.9 percent of all principal reduction mods in the second quarter of 2011, with portfolio mortgages accounting for the rest of the activity. ...

The Treasury Department has not sufficiently enforced rules for newer components of the Home Affordable Modification Program, according to a review released last week by the Government Accountability Office. Treasury officials acknowledge that the agency has not met all of the GAO’s recommendations but made no guarantees of tighter enforcement. “Treasury has experienced challenges in implementing the newer Making Home Affordable programs,” the GAO said, citing problems with the Principal Reduction Alternative, Second Lien Modification and Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives programs.

Ocwen Financial’s purchase of Litton Loan Servicing at the beginning of this month was contingent on the non-prime servicer implementing new practices based on an agreement with New York regulators. The Federal Reserve also took an enforcement action against Goldman Sachs last week relating to Litton’s servicing practices. “Our agreement sets a new higher standard for the residential mortgage servicing industry,” said Benjamin Lawsky, New York’s superintendent of financial services. “Goldman Sachs, Ocwen and Litton have now all agreed to put the rights of homeowners ahead of their profit margins by implementing these changes.” ...

Mortgage investing firm MountainView Capital Holdings partnered with Statebridge Company, an “investor-focused” servicer, to win an auction of loans sold by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. last week. Together, the firms won a 40.0 percent interest in a $282.0 million portfolio of residential mortgages from 48 failed banks. Statebridge will service the mortgages and Geneva House, an affiliate of Statebridge, was a minority investor in the deal. Officials with the firms counted the auction win as a major achievement – neither had won any previous structured transaction risk-sharing auctions by the FDIC. ...