Banks Forced To Pay Foreclosure Victims As Talks Continue

Bloomberg News (4/14, Woellert) reports, “The 14 largest US mortgage servicers must pay back homeowners for losses from foreclosures or loans” the servicers handled improperly, according to an announcement Wednesday between the servicers and the nation’s four major bank regulators, the “first of a set of sanctions” sought by the OCC, the Fed, the Office of Thrift Supervision, and the FDIC. Justice Department officials and 10 state attorneys general joined HUD officials Wednesday in a meeting with bank leaders, where the servicers “agreed in the settlement to conduct a review of all loans that went into foreclosure in 2009 and 2010. They also agreed to improve their foreclosure, loan modification and refinancing procedures by hiring staff, upgrading document-tracking systems, assigning a single point of contact for each borrower and policing lawyers and vendors,” and said they would end dual-track foreclosures.