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National Mortgage Settlement gets Mortgage Settlement Oversight office

by Broderick Perkins

(5/17/2012) Erate Exclusive - If you have questions, concerns or complaints about the National Mortgage Settlement, contact your attorney general's office or the settlement office direct, but Joe's also your guy.

This Joe is Joseph A. Smith who has been picked as monitor to oversee the National Mortgage Settlement from his newly established Office of Mortgage Settlement Oversight where he's busy making sure lenders comply with the terms in the settlement.

To assist in that effort, he's initially set up an online "Report Client Issues" tool for consumer advocates to report mortgage servicing complaints.

Not your average Joe, Smith last served as North Carolina Commissioner of Banks from 2002 to 2012 overseeing the licensing and regulation of banks and thrifts. He also helped push through the North Carolina Mortgage Lending Act, North Carolina Secure and Fair Mortgage Licensing Act and State Home Foreclosure Prevention Project.

He's a good man for the job.

The $25+ billion National Mortgage Settlement between the federal government, states' attorneys general and five of the nation's largest mortgage servicers, came after a year-long investigation into an institutionalized culture of foreclosure abuse.

The settlement, signed Feb. 9, over faulty foreclosure practices servicers instituted shortly after the housing market crashed, is the largest ever federal-state civil settlement.

It targets an in-house culture of foreclosure violations including "robo-signed" foreclosure documents; "dual tracking" (simultaneously working on a mortgage modification while foreclosing on a homeowner), failures to offer non-foreclosure alternatives before foreclosing; filing improper federal bankruptcy court documentation, losing and misplacing crucial homeowner documents and generally giving distressed homeowners the runaround, rather than a single point of contact.

The settlement terms call for compliance to roll out over the next three years.

Smith is not charged with responding to individual consumer complaints. That's the job of the National Mortgage Settlement, attorneys general and other regulatory agencies.

But you can ask consumer advocates, attorneys, counselors, caseworkers and others to act on your behalf and use the Report Client Issues service to give Smith feedback about compliance or other issues that arise over the settlement.

"Lawyers, caseworkers and other consumer advocates are the eyes and ears on the ground who will know first, and know intimately, what kind of difference these payments, adjustments and programs are making," said Smith.

"This allows me, as Monitor, to hear complaints and learn more about advocates' impressions of how the settlement is working. Although I'll extensively review reports and monitoring from the banks and my own team of auditors, it is still critical for me to receive information from the heart of each community this settlement serves," Smith said. Smith said he will use the complaints and other information to investigate worrisome trends. "I believe that the settlement will bring relief to distressed borrowers and help communities across the country," Smith said.

"To do so, we need to be certain that the agreement's servicing standards are being adhered to, and professionals who fill out this form will help inform me of any recurring issues that need to be addressed. I appreciate all who participate, as they will help ensure that this settlement makes a difference in mortgage servicing standards for all borrowers," he added.

 

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