Refinance Free Credit

HOPE NOW, the well-known private sector alliance of mortgage servicers, counselors, and investors that is working to help prevent foreclosures, said Wednesday that mortgage servicers helped approximately 170,000 homeowners avoid foreclosure during May, via a combination of repayment plans and loan modification activity. If June holds the same pace, the mortgage lending industry will have [...]

Those with any history in the mortgage servicing business, or capital markets, likely know the name Fidelity National Information Services (FIS: 37.11, 0.00%) — the FIS logomark has been a mainstay at numerous industry events during the past 10 years, with the sprawling mortgage services company providing nearly every technology and service imaginable to pretty [...]

Citigroup Inc. (C: 16.92, -1.23%) said Tuesday that former Morgan Stanley (MS: 35.94, -1.80%) exec Sanjiv Das will replace Bill Beckmann as president of the CitiMortgage franchise, effective July 16. Das, who previously worked at Citigroup in a global mortgage group from 1991 through 1999, was most recently a managing director at Morgan Stanley’s institutional [...]

As the number of sub- and non-performing residential mortgages continue to grow on the balance sheet of banks and other financial institutions nationwide, one of the larger hindrances to a sale of any mortgage pool has been uncertainty over pricing. After all, just what is a troubled mortgage really worth, when the value of the [...]

Origen Financial, Inc. (ORGN: 1.26, -8.70%) said Wednesday that it had completed a previously-announced sale of its servicing platform assets to Green Tree Servicing LLC, a well-known servicer of manufactured housing loans, other residential and consumer loans. The deal involves approximately $1.6 billion of manufactured housing loans, Origen said in a press statement. Green Tree [...]

Two different indexes tracking mortgage activity yielded wildly different conclusions Wednesday, leaving some investors to conclude that the number of distressed borrowers may yet be understated in key industry statistics. A widely-watched index released by the Mortgage Bankers Association Wednesday morning found that overall application activity — fueled by both purchase and refinance applications — [...]

(Updated to reflect correction to ABA press statement) Continued stress in the housing market combined with general weakness in the overall economy contributed to an increase in the delinquency rates for home equity lines of credit and bank cards during the first quarter of 2008, according to a quarterly consumer credit report released Wednesday morning by [...]

As if IndyMac Bancorp Inc. (IMB: 0.65, 0.00%) didn’t have enough problems of the real variety right now — trying to find sources of capital among them, as bank losses tied to Alt-A mortgages mount — the Center for Responsible Lending on Monday took aim at what many expect to be the next target for [...]

Last week, The NYT’s DealBook blog highlighted a guy that we here at HW can’t help but root for: his name? Joshua Persky, a former i-banker for Houlihan Lokey — the New York-based investment bank was named “Firm of the Year” last month by trade publication The M&A Advisor, but like others has been shedding [...]

There really isn’t anything quite like Wall Street, where second and third chances often abound for money managers that have seen prior investments fail — and often in spectacularly blinding ways. The latest proof of this hidden rule comes courtesy of various CDO managers, whose former investment vehicles imploded along with the private-party mortgage boom [...]