- theMReport.com - https://themreport.com -

JP Morgan to Buy $45 Billion Worth of Ocwen Servicing Rights

paying-money [1]Mortgage servicer Ocwen Financial [2] is selling the mortgage servicing rights for $45 billion worth of Agency home loans to JPMorgan Chase [3], according to a report [4] from Bloomberg.

In an update on its website [5] dated March 2, Ocwen announced that it had "signed a letter of intent with a buyer on the sale of mortgage servicing rights (MSRs) on a portfolio consisting of approximately 277,000 performing Agency loans owned by Fannie Mae with a total unpaid principal balance of approximately $45 billion." According to the Bloomberg report, a person familiar with the transaction identified New York-based Chase as the buyer in that transaction.

In that March 2 update [5], Ocwen wrote that the transaction was "subject to a definitive agreement, approvals by Fannie Mae and FHFA and other customary conditions, Ocwen expects the transaction to close by mid-year and the loan servicing to transfer over the course of the second half of 2015."

Spokespeople for Chase, Ocwen, and Fannie Mae all declined to comment on the transaction when reached by email.

Atlanta-based Ocwen Financial is the largest non-bank, non-government mortgage servicer in the nation. The company is reportedly looking downsize after a tumultuous year of extensive regulatory trouble and scrutiny that resulted in multi-million dollar settlements in both New York and California. Ocwen has also endured ratings downgrades [6] by both Fitch Ratings and Morningstar Credit Ratings since the first of the year, largely due to the servicer's regulatory entanglements.

In February, Ocwen announced [7] that it intended to sell the MSR on a portfolio of approximately 81,000 performing residential loans owned by Freddie Mac with a total principal balance of about $9.8 billion to Dallas, Texas-based Nationstar. At the time of the deal with Nationstar, Ocwen CEO Ron Faris said it may be only the beginning of MSR transactions between the two companies.