Fannie Mae has announced Servicer Total Achievement and Rewards (STAR) Program's Scorecard results for 2012, the program that measures servicers across key operational and performance areas relative to their peers, and acknowledges their achievement through STAR designations. Final STAR designations will be communicated in April and will be based on the program's two methods of servicer evaluation: Scorecard metrics related to customer service and foreclosure prevention and operational assessments of the servicer's processes, policies and capabilities.Click to continue

Stonegate Mortgage Corporation has announced the hiring of Robert Meachum as executive vice president of servicing. He will report to Dan Bettenburg, president of Stonegate. Meachum is a servicing executive with 20-plus years of experience in the mortgage industry. Before joining Stonegate, Meachum worked at Homeward Residential where he served as senior vice president, subservicing and special servicing. He was responsible for Homeward's fee-based servicing, which included sub and special servicing, as well as business development.Click to continue

Lender Processing Services Inc. (LPS) has reported the following "first look" at January 2013 month-end mortgage performance statistics derived from its loan-level database representing approximately 70 percent of the overall market. Total U.S. loan delinquency rate (loans 30 or more days past due, but not in foreclosure) stood at 7.03 percent for January. There was a month-over-month change in delinquency rate of -2.03 percent, while the year-over-year change in delinquency rate was -8.35 percent.Click to continue

RealtyTrac has released its Q4 and Year-End 2012 U.S. Foreclosure & Short Sales Report, which shows a total of 947,995 U.S. properties in some stage of foreclosure or real estate-owned (REO) were sold during the year, a decrease of six percent from 2011 and down 11 percent from 2010. These foreclosure-related sales accounted for 21 percent of all U.S. residential sales during the year, down from 23 percent of all sales in 2011 and down from 28 percent of all sales in 2010.Click to continue

Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen announced that $143,628,842 in loan-related relief has reportedly been provided to 3,065 Wisconsin borrowers under the Nationwide Mortgage Servicing Settlement, an average savings of $46,861 for each borrower receiving benefits. In addition, 184 Wisconsin borrowers have been offered $13 million worth of savings in approved mortgage modifications. These benefits apply to borrowers who did not lose their homes to foreclosure but to consumers struggling to make payments, or to consumers who owed more than their home was worth.Click to continue

McGeough Lamacchia Realty reports that in an effort to streamline the company and become more profitable, Bank of America is selling off its mortgages to servicers like Seterus, Greentree, Resurgent, SPS and RCS. In January of this year, Bank of America announced that it signed agreements to sell the servicing rights on two million residential mortgage loans totaling approximately $306 billion, a percentage of which are already in the process of a short sale. The transfers of servicing rights are scheduled to occur in stages over the course of 2013.Click to continue

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) has announced its November 2012 Refinance Report, which shows that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have reached a new milestone and refinanced more than two million loans through the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP). In November alone, nearly 130,000 homeowners refinanced their mortgage through HARP, making it the second biggest month in 2012. Between January and November of 2012 nearly one million loans were refinanced through HARP, more than in any single year since the program began.Click to continue

RealtyTrac has released its U.S. Foreclosure Market Report for January 2013, which shows foreclosure filings—default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions—were reported on 150,864 U.S. properties in January, a decrease of seven percent from the previous month and down 28 percent from January 2012. The report also shows one in every 869 U.S. housing units with a foreclosure filing during the month.Click to continue

Fifth Third Mortgage Company, a subsidiary of Fifth Third Bank, continues to outpace the industry in permanent loan modifications in the government's Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP). This is the third consecutive year Fifth Third Mortgage Company has exceeded the national average. Of Fifth Third's portfolio eligible for HAMP consideration, approximately 97.3 percent of trial plans have been converted to permanent modifications. According to U.S. Treasury data released through November 2012, that percentage is higher than the national average of 87 percent.Click to continue

The national mortgage delinquency rate (the rate of borrowers 60 or more days past due) declined for the fourth consecutive quarter, dropping from 5.41 percent in Q3 2012 to 5.19 percent in Q4 2012. On a year-over-year basis, the mortgage delinquency rate has declined nearly 14 percent from 6.01 percent in Q4 2011.Click to continue