Credit card giant Discover Financial Services is adding mortgages to its menu of financial products and services with the acquisition of Home Loan Center, a subsidiary of Tree.com. The sale price for Home Loan Center, which operates as LendingTree Loans, is up to $56.0 million. LendingTree, a correspondent lender, originates and processes home loans in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The acquisition includes substantially all of HLC’s operating and related assets as well as LendingTree’s lead-generation system, adding a residential mortgage origination component to Discover’s direct lending system. Discover, a direct banking and...

Lenders clamoring for a hand hold around the slippery issue of “strategic defaulters” do have options in the form of technology and legal leverage to tackle the issue even as the problem may not be as pronounced as first thought, say experts. The problem of borrowers who otherwise have the capacity to make their mortgage payments but instead opt to walk away from the loan was once a fringe issue in the industry. But strategic default became a bigger concern as more and more borrowers found they owed more on their home than the house was worth, according to Brent Taggart, senior vice president at Green River Capital, a Utah-based real estate owned management and...

Mortgage lenders that are anxious about complying with the call report requirements of the National Mortgage Licensing System might want to consider a new automated solution developed by LendingSpace, a Fulton, MD-based technology firm. “Lenders who find themselves using a patchwork of their existing technologies to meet these requirements will spend a great deal of time and resources to ensure impeccable compliance,” said Ravi Varma, CEO of LendingSpace. “With a click of a mouse, the Automated Mortgage Call Report function in our ComplianceOne suite gathers the information from the loan origination system, and formats it so that it’s ready for...

Mortgage servicers have made little headway trying to de-bunk the widespread belief that foreclosures are profitable transactions for lenders, but a new Mortgage Bankers Association report tries to explain the impact of defaults on servicing income. Servicing advances are reimbursed when a modification is completed within 45 days, the study notes. Because they occur earlier than a foreclosure, mods limit the amount of money the servicer has to advance to investors on delinquent accounts, the trade group said. “The servicer’s reimbursement is at the top of the waterfall, meaning the servicer’s advances, which may have been from...

Home purchase mortgage activity is limping along in 2011 as high levels of both distressed properties and cash sales continue to weigh down the housing market. According to new numbers released by the Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance HousingPulse Tracking Survey, the Distressed Property Index decreased slightly in April but still remained at an elevated level of 47.7 percent. An abundance of distressed properties in the housing market is cutting into home purchase lending. The new HousingPulse Survey results show that the share of damaged real estate owned – the hardest sector of home sales to obtain traditional financing – jumped from [Includes one graph]

Mortgage delinquency rates improved in almost all categories, and although they’re still high, it could signal a positive turning point, according to recent reports. The Inside Mortgage Finance Larger Servicer Delinquency Index showed an overall delinquency rate at 10.27 percent in the first quarter, down from 11.25 percent in 4Q10, and the lowest seen since the 9.39 percent rate in 1Q09. Improvements were seen in every category of delinquency from last quarter. Loans 30-60 days delinquent went from 2.81 percent to 2.41 percent, 60-90 days delinquent from 1.25 percent to 1.01 percent and loans over 90 days delinquent from... [Includes one data chart]

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency will host workshops for directors of nationally chartered community banks and federal savings associations in New York at the Hilton New York, June 28-29, 2011...

Staff at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and other legal professionals are scrutinizing the fundamental questions the foreclosure crisis has raised about the adequacy of the legal framework for modern mortgage note transactions, especially when it comes to transferring and enforcing notes and mortgages, and how best to resolve them. The role of the Mortgage Electronic Registration System is a part of the discussion. To date, they are relying upon a number of issues that have been identified in a draft discussion document prepared recently by the Permanent Editorial Board of the Uniform Commercial Code, in conjunction with...

FHA loans in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware performed better in 2008 and in 2009 than in 2006 and 2007 as credit quality became stronger, according to a new study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. The findings should allay concerns of policymakers in Washington, DC, that FHA defaults have risen during the housing crisis and may put the federal mortgage insurance fund in peril, the study said. Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data, one of the data sources used by Fed analysts, indicate that overall lending patterns in the Third District states have ...

The federal government's gradual pullback as an investor in the MBS market is beginning to open more space for commercial banks and other private investors. Commercial banks increased their investment in residential MBS by a solid 6.5 percent during the first quarter, pushing their combined holdings to a record $1.311 trillion. That represented about 20.0 percent of an overall MBS market that has been shrinking since the third quarter of 2009. Bank holdings of residential MBS were up 14.2 percent from the first quarter of last year. Through the U.S. Treasury, the Federal Reserve and the retained holdings of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the federal government held... [Includes two data charts]