The agreement, a draft of which was obtained by American Banker, was previously undisclosed. It has been forged on a separate but parallel track from continuing settlement talks between Bank of America, state attorneys general and other regulators over alleged mortgage origination and servicing failures.
B of A's pact with HUD requires it to waive a minimum of $10 million in unpaid mortgage payments and vet each of the 57,000 delinquent borrowers for a possible loan modification, short sale or other foreclosure alternative.
"Our total costs for the program will be multiples of that" $10 million minimum, B of A spokesman Dan Frahm said. The deal calls for measures to "ensure these customers have every opportunity to stay in their homes," he added.
After such outreach, the settlement paves the way for B of A to foreclose on homes that borrowers could not afford even after a mortgage modification and those that have been left vacant by owners.
In forging the agreement, HUD decided to forgo steep monetary damages or admissions of error from the bank.
Instead, it pushed for the lender to implement steps that in most cases it was supposed to have already taken under the terms of its FHA-guaranteed loans, with the apparent aim of minimizing foreclosures and related insurance claims.
"We took the borrowers into account first," said HUD general counsel Helen Kanovsky. "We think that that's really the best thing for the FHA [insurance] fund as well."
The agreement is HUD's first involving settlement of claims in which a servicer failed to offer loss mitigation to borrowers. It does not, however, prevent HUD from seeking damages from B of A for unrelated origination and servicing failures.
"We fought for as narrow a [legal] release as possible and as much money as possible," Kanovsky said.
Under HUD's standard terms, borrowers must be less than 12 months delinquent to qualify for loan modifications. With the B of A settlement, the minimum of $10 million the bank agreed to pay will go to covering past-due arrearages and giving borrowers who are more than a year behind the possibility of qualifying for foreclosure alternatives.
The agreement was signed July 11 by B of A senior vice president Robert Gaither, who directed queries to a company spokesman.
All of the 57,000 borrowers covered by the agreement are 12 to 24 months delinquent. They account for only 4% of the total 1.5 million FHA loans that B of A services but a substantial portion of the company's seriously delinquent loans. B of A holds $19.8 billion in FHA-insured loans that are 90 days or more delinquent, and another $3.1 billion in FHA loans 31 to 89 days delinquent, the bank said in its second-quarter earnings release.
Under its terms with HUD, B of A will have to pay an independent monitor to review its modification work and report to HUD. It is also obligated to seek borrowers through database searches, letters, phone queries and visits to properties. Borrowers who fail to qualify for loan modifications, will receive from B of A $4,000 for a short sale and $7,500 for a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure.
The deal reflects the high levels of financial uncertainty surrounding such negotiations. In May, B of A agreed to pay $20 million, or double the minimum for the latest settlement, for improperly foreclosing on a relatively few 160 homes of military service members.
Bank of America continues to filed backdated assignments of mortgages - this is absolutely frigging OUTRAGEOUS.