Servicing

With the latest bank failure tallying up numbers for 2011 at 64, lawmakers convened a field hearing in Georgia Tuesday to determine whether risk-wary authorities are to blame for folding institutions and federal rescues. Appearing as witnesses, several bank presidents complained of a stifling regulatory environment, which federal regulatory authorities, in turn, portrayed as needed and helpful in the wake of the financial crisis. According to the FDIC, this year's 64 failures followed 157 from last year, which built on 140 failures over 2009, totaling 380 failures since 2008.

Elizabeth Warren for Senate? Those four words may take a turn as real as the next sound-bite if the Progressive Change Campaign Committee has anything to say about it. The PAC has raised $100,000 for Warren.

Ellie Mae. is growing its customer base and mortgage origination facilitation through the acquisition of Del Mar DataTrac, Inc. The recently announced transaction is projected to increase Ellie Mae's market share, putting them on track to originate nearly 30 percent of all residential mortgages in the U.S. this year.

WFG National Title Insurance Company has a new vice president of sales and marketing, with the hiring of Wendy Lunt. Lunt├â┬ó├óÔÇÜ┬¼├óÔÇ×┬ós appointment is WFG├â┬ó├óÔÇÜ┬¼├óÔÇ×┬ós most recent step in growing its newly acquired Puget Sound division.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau joined an exclusive law enforcement club Monday as it announced an agreement with the Federal Trade Commission that makes it a full-fledged member of the Consumer Sentinel Network. Law enforcement agencies and personnel will now be able to view consumer complaints the CFPB submits about credit issues, debt collection, and - eventually - mortgage lending practices that complainants report. An FTC spokesperson says the CFPB will eventually add mortgage lending complaints.

The market remains a dim one for new single-family homes, according to an index jointly released by Wells Fargo and the National Association of Home Builders. The index registered confidence at 15 on a 0-to-100 scale, staying largely the same since July. The low confidence follows a hit taken by homebuilding companies in the stock market last week. Analysts and economists weighed in with MReport about how slowing momentum in home construction and sales, as reflected by homebuilder confidence, impacts job creation and consumer confidence.

More homeowners and mortgage borrowers who chose to refinance their loans opted for the fixed-rate loan instead of adjustable-rate mortgages over the second quarter this year, according to a Freddie Mac quarterly report released Monday. The GSE held that some 37 percent of borrowers refinancing their mortgages moved forward with 15- and 20-year loans. Refinancing borrowers nodded toward these fixed-rate loans in increasing numbers, according to the report.

New Jersey loan specialist, Shelley Solari, has been honored among the state├â┬ó├óÔÇÜ┬¼├óÔÇ×┬ós top mortgage professionals. New Jersey Monthly├â┬ó├óÔÇÜ┬¼├óÔÇ×┬ós New Jersey 2011 Mortgage Professionals list recently honored Solari for her service.

A new director is taking over at Municipal Mortgage & Equity, LLC. Frederick W. Puddester was recently announced as the company's new director and was also appointed to its audit committee.

In an endeavor to get ahead of mortgage-related woes from the financial crisis, mortgage giant Bank of America has offered to sell a chunk of its mortgage portfolio servicing rights to GSE Fannie Mae, according to the Wall Street Journal. The sale of bad loan rights to the government entity may shift new bulk onto federal balance sheets at a time when the GSE recently posted second-quarter losses and announced plans to petition the government for more taxpayer funds.