Bankruptcy

The Future of Mortgage Servicing

By Katie Porter

In my prior post on mortgage servicing, I talked about the potential of mortgage servicers to be harmful barriers between homeowners and investors, both of whom may want to negotiate a loan modification. Recognizing such a problem raises the question of a solution. U.S. Representative Maxine Waters recently introduced legislation that would profoundly alter the duties of mortgage servicers. The bill, HR 5679, The Foreclosure Prevention and Sound Mortgage Servicing Act of 2008, would prohibit the initiation of a foreclosure if the mortagee or servicer has failed to engage in "reasonable loss mitigation activities." The bill lays out exactly what counts as loss mitigation and offers up non-binding guidance on standards of affordability for loss mitigation. Servicers would have to report data on their loss mitigation activities, disaggregated by the type of mitigation activity (separately accounting for things like modifications, deeds in lieu of foreclosure, or repayment plans).

The bill also takes aim at the communication problems between servicers and homeowners. The bill requires services to provide a toll-free number that provides borrowers with direct access to a person with the information and authority to fully resolve issues related to loss mitigation and specifies that such a person must be physically located in the United States. Servicers are also required to forward borrower's information to HUD-certified housing counselors whenever a borrower is 60 days or more overdue.

In the hearing last week on the bill (which you can watch as an archived webcast), Chairwoman Waters kept returning to a fundamental point--mortgage servicing is an unregulated industry. The witness testimony was essentially unanimous that mortgage servicing has a tremendous impact on American families and on the resolution of the current crisis. Of course, the debate was over whether this regulation was the right approach. The bill hasn't gotten much publicity yet, but I encourage readers who are interested in the foreclosure crisis to take a look and post their feedback.

Full post as published by Credit Slips on April 23, 2008 (boomark / email).