Mortgage Industry News

The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) recently released its plan for housing system reform – finally, someone with an idea! (In all seriousness, we commend any and all that offer solutions to fix what has been wrought and ensure that it doesn’t happen again.)

While we found the NAHB plan to be light on specific solutions overall, it does propose some interesting ideas, such as turning the Federal Home Loan Bank (FHLB) system into a regionalized mortgage securitization network fed through a combination of private lenders and state/local housing finance agencies. Our own work with the Massachusetts Housing Finance Authority has demonstrated the potential merit this proposal holds. Additionally, the FHLBs have proven to be conservative in most of their dealings and, as such, did not take quite the hit other lenders did in the subprime fallout.
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They say it takes a village to raise a child.  For five years, Titan Lenders Corp. has been our child, and we’re thrilled to announce that our baby has outgrown its current village, necessitating the expansion of our executive team.  Our newest “villager” is Bill Walsh, who will serve as chief financial officer.  We’ve known Bill for many years, having worked with him in some capacity in our previous professional lives (Was there life before Titan?  Not that we can recall…), and when the time came to choose someone to steer our financial future, we couldn’t think of a better candidate than Bill.

For more on Bill’s background and why we think he’s tops, visit our “News” page: http://titanlenderscorp.com/News.htm

By Ruth Lee

The Titan team just returned from MBA Servicing in Orlando, and the name on everyone’s lips was MERS.  From what we heard, smaller servicers in particular are the folks that have really struggled to meet the MERS QA requirements and, thus, we’re on the receiving end of some strongly worded letters from MERS to comply or else.  (The rumor mill at MBA Servicing also indicated that “or else” could mean financial penalties for continued non-compliance.)

Folks, the hole is only going to get deeper, as Mary points out in her article in Wednesday’s MBA Newslink.  She writes, “Serious industry players can no longer afford to fervently pray for a last-minute stay and then scramble to comply when it becomes clear there will be no forthcoming regulatory pardon. Patience for the mortgage industry is already at a minimum. Why exhaust it further?”

Hope is not a strategy.  Contact Titan to find out more about our MERS QA and Compliance Services and how we can help you be audit-ready, all year long.

In time, every company with an eye for success reassesses both its marketplace and its role serving that marketplace. Moreover, it is a best practice to “check in” on opportunities to add to the value delivered to its customers.  Our ongoing analysis of Titan’s strengths and market opportunities practically begged for an extension our services. As is our nature, we’ve obliged.

It is our great honor to announce that Titan Lenders Corp. now offers processing and underwriting outsource services in addition to our back-office fulfillment outsource services, Whole Loan Purchase Review program and MERS QA data reconciliation and compliance services. We’ve grown and transformed with the mortgage market for a half decade as Titan Lenders Corp., bringing with us combined expertise of 50+ years.  Combined with the versatile functionality of our patented Cerberyx platform, our experience makes Titan an unparalleled provider of mission critical mortgage lifecycle services.

To oversee operations in this new division, we’ve also brought on board another Colorado pro, and this one’s got the chops.  Jan Conner has nearly two decades’ experience not only in managing processing and underwriting departments, but also in building mortgage companies from the ground up.  You name it, she’s done it, and we’re thrilled that she’ll now be doing it under the Titan name.  Full details are available here.

Titan’s new Executive Vice President and General Counsel Mark Ridder has been drawing attention from the mortgage and legal media, this time in a feature for Law Week Colorado.  In the article, Mark offers up his own “Titan-esque” philosophy regarding his role at the company:

“The business enthusiast sums up his counsel role with the formula for ‘quality accountability:’ QA + QC = QA₂. 1n other words, the product of quality analysis coupled with quality control. He calls it his equation for private investment in the future.”

We call it, “The Foundation Upon Which We Built Our Business.”  Glad to have you on board, Mark!

Partnerships are key to succeeding in the mortgage industry.  No company is an island, and having vendors that play nice AND provide complementary services extends the value of your relationship with those vendors.  Quality is at the center of everything Titan does, and that includes the companies with whom we choose to partner.  That being said, we are thrilled to announce our referral relationship with The Compliance Group, one of the mortgage industry’s leading compliance service providers and perhaps the industry’s best kept secret.  Details about the relationship can be found on our News page: http://www.titanlenderscorp.com/News.htm.

Titan’s team is at it again! February’s Mortgage Technology magazine features a Mary Kladde/Ruth Lee co-byline on the trials and tribulations of meeting new MERS Quality Assurance procedures. Bottom line: old-style manual data review won’t cut it. Automation is a must, as is boots-on-the-ground expertise.

For more on how Titan can help with your MERS QA needs, check out our MERS Management Solutions page.

To read a really intelligent, thoughtful piece on how the MERS QA procedures may actually help push the industry towards data integrity and standardization, read our article online in this month’s Mortgage Technology.

by: Ruth Lee

The mortgage industry loves its acronyms doesn’t it? From LOS to LQI, PPE to GSE, AU to DU and everything in between, it’s a veritable alphabet soup out there. Two of the acronyms that get most confused are QA (quality assurance) and QC (quality control) because the industry has long assumed that the two terms are interchangeable. News flash – they aren’t, and if you’re relying on QC to achieve QA, you are in for a rough 2012. For those that don’t know, QA is systemic failure prevention; QC is a failure-detection system…and you need both if you hope to make it in the current mortgage market. For more on the differences between QA and QC, check out my article in the February issue of Secondary Marketing Executive.

by: Elizabeth Lee

Although MERS® Quality Assurance requirements are not that complex, they are time consuming. For those of us that love to read Quality Assurance Manuals for tedious procedural updates to implement, not a major problem. But many of us are busy working and looking for trusted colleagues to break trail on those issues and report back. If I may be so bold…a brief data dump incoming. Or, skip this blog and simply call me on how to meet MERS® QA requirements.

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by: Ruth Lee

Lazy, uninformed and disingenuous – my cup runneth over with epithets for this Congress.  It is unsurprising that our Congress and a general takeover by Communists are polling around the same approval rating.

If you are buying a home or refinancing in 2012, you can expect to pay a higher rate of anywhere from .5% to .8% for THIRTY YEARS because Congress insisted it “pay for” the short term 2% payroll tax extension with G-fees.   G-fees are an easy target, and your comprehension is not required for you to feel the impact.  For example, there are millions that still can’t define a CDO, but are quite aware that their home is worth 30% less than it was five years ago.

Planning on ringing in the 2012 New Year in style?

If you are a servicer, think again.  This year, December 31, falls on a Saturday and is also the deadline regulators have set for the completion of your MERS data reconciliation, your Annual Report and your MERSCORP Quality Assurance plan.

In April, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency issued consent orders to MERSCORP and to the top servicers requiring that they refine and implement Quality Assurance procedures designed to achieve the following.

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by: Ruth Lee

Last week, Sen. Barney Frank (D – Mass.) announced his plans to retire, and the good folks at MortgageOrb.com asked moi for my thoughts on this news.  I, of course, took the opportunity to add some much needed snark and sass to the piece.

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by Mary Kladde

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac recently took to Capitol Hill to defend enormous executive bonuses after Congress voted to subject GSE employees to the federal pay scale.  Seriously?  The price tag for the GSE bailout is estimated to be $169 billion and counting, as losses continue to mount.

In the real world, at least among small to mid-size companies which represents the backbone of the US economy, if your company isn’t making a profit, you don’t get paid, much less are you rewarded with bonuses.   You tighten your belt or go out of business!  I’m not sure why the GSEs and Wall Street don’t work this way.

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by: Mark Ridder
Titan Lenders Corp General Counsel

I received the following excerpt in an email newsletter this morning:

MERS can’t seem to catch a break. Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden (does that name ring a bell?) has filed suit against the company alleging it repeatedly violated the state of Delaware’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act. Biden feels that MERS engaged, and continues to engage, in deceptive trade practices that cause confusion among homeowners, investors and other stakeholders in the mortgage finance system, seriously damaging the integrity of the land records that are central to Delaware’s real property system, and leading to improper foreclosure practices. These “deceptive” trade practices fall into three broad categories. The first is that “MERS, through its private mortgage registry, knowingly obscures important information from borrowers and the information that MERS does provide to borrowers is frequently inaccurate. The opacity of MERS’ mortgage registration database makes it difficult for consumers to know of or challenge inaccuracies in the MERS System. The second is that MERS often acts as an agent without authority from its proper principal. Because the MERS System was both unreliable and frequently inaccurate, MERS often does not know the identity of its proper principal. Where the name of the owner of the mortgage loan recorded in the MERS System does not reflect the true owner, any action MERS takes on behalf of the purported owner is without authority. The third is that MERS is effectively a “front” organization that has created a systemically important mortgage registry, but fails to properly oversee that registry or enforce its own rules on its members that participate in the registry. Rather than maintaining an adequate staff to provide MERS’ services, MERS operates through a network of over 20,000 deputized non-employee corporate officers who cause MERS to act without any meaningful oversight from anyone who works at MERS.”

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Remarks by Black Box Casino author Robert Stowe England at this month’s Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) annual conference in Chicago detailing his exploration of how, in his words, “The story of the financial crisis is the story of mortgage banking,” have been posted at YouTube:

His remarks also shed light on the current Occupy Wall Street phenomenon. Read the full press release here.