Posts Tagged ‘mortgage’

Today Show: “So, Countrywide employees were coaching them to lie?” Insider: “Yes.” Ex Countrywide Manager Exposes Its Lies | Consumerist

Hundreds of brokers netted in FBI sweep Arrests include two former Bear fund execs charged with fraud | MSNBC

Anatomy of a Meltdown: The Credit Crisis | Washington Post

In response to the tanking housing market, Minnesota passed some pretty strong mortgage industry regulation last year. Alex Stenback points to an article in the Strib reporting that there are now less than half as many mortgage originators as last year. And 50 mortgage brokers surrendered their licenses, as well.
More than 50 Minnesota mortgage brokers [...]

In a class-action lawsuit against Homecomings Financial, consumers alleged that Homecomings would charge borrowers for unnecessary homeowner’s insurance, fail to process payments on time, forcing borrowers to pay “Speedpay” fees of up to $12.50. One plaintiff says Homecomings charged him with six property-inspection fees in a 10-day period, apparently because Homecomings wanted to make sure [...]

Tracy Warren was a quality-control consultant for Bear Stearns and other mortgage security purchasers on Wall Street. Her job was to review mortgage loans to determine whether they had merit for investment purposes. (She saw the loans after they were made, but before they were sold to investors and led to the national economy’s crash-and-burn [...]

The Subprime Borrower Relief Act gives borrowers with subprime loans the right to defer a foreclosure sale of their residence for one year after the bill becomes law.

I was amused to read Mark Ireland’s post saying he came under fire by members of a panel on foreclosures at the recent Equal Justice Conference in Minneapolis for suggesting that mortgage loan servicers are not acting in the best interest of either consumers or lenders. I thought that was common knowledge.
Servicers make money from [...]

Alex Stenback of Behind the Mortgage recently posted the LendingTree data breach story seen here [and here], and his posting attracted a provocative comment regarding LendingTree’s lending practices. In short, the commenter alleged that LendingTree does not let banks compete, but has its own internal lending division (Home Loan Center) that does all the “competing.”

“Securitization” is a hot word in money circles, but I don’t think many people outside of Wall Street know what securitization is or what it means. The Wikipedia entry on securitization is very good, but a bit technical. I think I can boil it down a bit more.
Any asset can be securitized. One asset we [...]