Payments to 4.2 million borrowers are scheduled to begin on April 12 following an agreement reached by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Federal Reserve Board with 13 mortgage servicers. The agreement, which was reached earlier this year, provides $3.6 billion in cash payments to borrowers whose homes were in any stage of the foreclosure process in 2009 or 2010 and whose mortgages were serviced by one of the following companies, their affiliates, or subsidiaries: Aurora, Bank of America, Citibank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, MetLife Bank, Morgan Click to continue

Rouvaun Walker has been named vice president of the California Wholesale Division at WCS Lending LLC. A 20-plus-year veteran of the mortgage industry, Walker will be based out of WCS Lending’s newly-designed Concord, Calif. offices. Walker graduated from UC Berkley in 1991, with a degree in Economics and African-American Studies, and began working in the mortgage industry in 1992 as an account executive with American Residential Mortgage.Click to continue

Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have reached agreements in principle with the Federal Reserve Board to pay $557 million in cash payments and other assistance to help mortgage borrowers. These agreements are similar to those announced on Jan. 7, 2013, between 10 mortgage servicing companies and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Federal Reserve Board. Like the other institutions, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley were subject to enforcement actions for deficient practices in mortgage loan servicing and foreclosure processing.Click to continue

Ten mortgage servicing companies subject to enforcement actions for deficient practices in mortgage loan servicing and foreclosure processing have reached an agreement in principle with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Federal Reserve Board to pay more than $8.5 billion in cash payments and other assistance to help borrowers. The sum includes $3.3 billion in direct payments to eligible borrowers and $5.2 billion in other assistance, such as loan modifications and forgiveness of deficiency judgments.Click to continue

Overall customer satisfaction with mortgage lenders has reached its highest level in the past six years, according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2012 U.S. Primary Mortgage Origination Satisfaction Study. For a second consecutive year, overall customer satisfaction has increased to 761 (on a 1,000-point scale) in 2012 from 747 in 2011 and 734 in 2010. Quicken Loans ranked highest among primary mortgage lenders for a third consecutive year, with a score of 817, and performed well in all four factors measured in the study.Click to continue

LenderLive Network Inc. has announced that Joseph Neamon has joined the company as vice president of operations to help manage the day-to-day division activities. Eric Seabrook also has come onboard as vice president of client management in the company’s loan servicing division to focus on maintaining strong client relations.Click to continue

HOPE NOW, and its partners, hosted events recently in Chicago and Indianapolis, where nearly 1,000 families received face-to-face mortgage assistance from mortgage servicers, non-profit housing counselors and others. The two events were co-sponsored by the Obama Administration’s Making Home Affordable Program and NeighborWorks America. Approximately 650 families attended in Chicago on April 23rd and about 350 were in Indianapolis on April 25th seeking mortgage help.Click to continue

The National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) and four of its member organizations have announced a joint federal housing discrimination complaint with the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD) against U.S. Bancorp and U.S. Bank NA. The complaint is the result of an undercover investigation of U.S. Bank’s properties that found that its foreclosed properties in White areas are much better-maintained and marketed than its properties in African-American and Latino neighborhoods.Click to continue

I was recently fortunate enough to have my 2012 mortgage industry hiring forecast published online at NationalMortgageProfessional.com. Two of my forecasts were that the movement of top originators among firms would accelerate during 2012 and that consolidation in the industry would continue resulting in mid-tier originators gaining market share. I want to delve a little deeper into my reasoning behind those forecasts in this article.Click to continue

Six Los Angeles County residents have been charged for their roles in a mortgage fraud scheme that used fraudulent loan applications and supporting documents to convince lenders to fund approximately 20 loans that resulted in approximately $4 million in losses. Defendants Anthony Lewis of the San Fernando Valley; Maria Arriaza, formerly an escrow officer from Palmdale, Calif.; and Deon Jackson, a mortgage broker from Gardena, Calif. were indicted by a federal grand jury on three charges of wire fraud in violation of 18 U.S.C.Click to continue