Kate Berry

The Florida appeals court ruling could make it harder for mortgage servicers to use such records as evidence for foreclosure without verifying the underlying information.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are gradually increasing the guarantee fees they collect from lenders, and may discontinue the volume discounts they give large banks, acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency Ed DeMarco said on Monday.

"We should not be penalized because we were not on the favored list of institutions that were deemed 'too-big-to-fail,' " Mike Perry says in a public campaign rarely seen from an executive of a failed bank.

A Fannie Mae announcement late Wednesday heaping praise on the highest-rated mortgage servicers was notable for its glaring omissions: Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co., and five other large banks did not make the list.

The New Jersey Supreme Court lifted a foreclosure ban on Ally Financial Inc. on Monday, removing the last state barrier that had prohibited mortgage servicers from resuming foreclosures one year after their widespread "robo-signing" procedures came to light. The court allowed five other large banks to resume foreclosing on delinquent homeowners last month.

Chicago's City Council published an ordinance Thursday that would require banks, mortgage servicers and institutional investors to provide maintenance and upkeep of vacant properties before the homes have gone through foreclosure.

Government-sponsored enterprise Freddie Mac told investors this month that it is not considering "significant discount pricing" when selling its backlog of foreclosed homes, according to a letter obtained by American Banker. A spokesman said the agency doesn't want to "tank" the housing market.

The state attorneys general have a secret weapon in their negotiations with the largest mortgage servicers: the results of a HUD investigation into the banks' robo-signing practices.

The Treasury Department said Thursday that it did not pay any incentives for foreclosure prevention efforts to Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. in the second quarter, as the two banks still need "substantial improvement" in their mortgage servicing operations. But Wells Fargo & Co. did make the cut.

Some of the largest mortgage servicers are still fabricating documents that should have been signed years ago and submitting them as evidence to foreclose on homeowners. Several dozen documents reviewed by American Banker show that as recently as August some of the largest U.S. banks, including Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Co., Ally Financial Inc., and OneWest Financial Inc., were essentially backdating paperwork necessary to support their right to foreclose.

The Government National Mortgage Association said Friday that it is expanding the parameters for loans to be repuchased from its trusts to include those that have successfully completed a three-month trial payment period.

It will take less time than previously expected for the housing market to clear the supply of distressed homes on the market, but that so-called shadow inventory will still be around for nearly four years, Standard & Poor's Rating Services said this week.

The Mortgage Bankers Association raised its 2011 forecast of residential originations on Friday, citing historically low mortgage rates that have ignited refinance activity. But the higher projections do not indicate a recovery in the housing market.

A high proportion of business owners took out toxic mortgages on their homes, new data shows. Now in default, they can't access credit just as their firms' sales are tanking.

Home prices will fall 5% this year and hit bottom in 2012, assuming sales of foreclosed homes start to pick up this year, according to JPMorgan Chase analysts.

The Obama administration faces reputational and practical problems if it rents out foreclosed homes as part of its new efforts to unload the backlog of real-estate owned properties held by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

S&P's move caused "a big rally in Treasuries and mortgage rates have come down near historic lows," Saiyid Naqvi says. "With that, we're seeing a surge in refinance volume."

H&R Block Inc. has agreed to pay $125 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the state of Massachusetts against Option One Mortgage Corp., its former subprime lending unit.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development has reached a settlement with Bank of America, which releases the company from liability for failing to provide alternatives to foreclosure on 57,000 delinquent government-insured mortgages.

At a time when megabank mortgage servicers are under siege by regulators and consumer groups for their treatment of customers, a small band of specialty servicers is trying to convince Washington that its members can do better.