Three penalized mortgage servicers may still get Home Affordable Modification Program fees, withheld from the Treasury Department, if the companies make necessary corrections in a timely manner.
The Treasury released its first quarter HAMP compliance review of the top-10 mortgage servicers Thursday. The government will withhold HAMP payments due to Bank of America (BAC: 10.65 +1.04%), Wells Fargo (WFC: 26.22 +3.39%) and JPMorgan Chase (JPM: 40.98 +1.46%) because of poor performance. Ocwen Financial (OCN: 12.25 -0.89%) scored similar poor results, but the Treasury said it will not withhold fees because the company acquired a large servicing portfolio from HomEq during the review period.
The Treasury launched HAMP in March 2009 and set aside $29.9 billion for the program. Servicers provided nearly 700,000 permanent modifications through April 2011, according to the monthly report.
The Treasury will withhold more than $7.1 million in May payments from BofA, $8 million from Chase and $8.7 million from Wells.
In a conference call Thursday, Treasury Assistant Secretary for financial stability Tim Massad said the reviews are "the next step" the government is taking to ensure the program provides as much help as possible.
"The goal of these assessments is to provide more transparency. This is an expansion of our compliance and reporting efforts," Massad said. "We will now start withholding payments next month. That's just the nature of the remedy under the contract. If they fix the problem within a reasonable time they will get the money."
Read on.
No comments:
Post a Comment