There has been a lot of movement from big banks in meeting their obligations in the National Mortgage Settlement. A report out last week shows the five national banks in the settlement administered $350-million in total relief to North Carolinians in the last year. That affects about 7,600 borrowers. Settlement Monitor Joseph Smith runs down the national numbers in this video statement.
"And show 550,000 families got over $45-billion of gross dollar consumer relief, on an average of about 82-thousand dollars a family,” said Smith.
The former North Carolina Commissioner of Banks says there still needs to be a lot of work done on the ground with how servicers treat customers.
"I've heard from a lot of people in the field who represent distressed borrowers that a lot of work continues to need to be done in terms of servicing standards," said Smith. "That is, the provisions related to how servicers treat their customers, so I know we've got a lot of work to do."
http://youtu.be/oHaCCuqgX78
Smith said the infrastructure is in place to monitor servicer performance. And with that monitoring, he says they will get better results for consumers.
The national banks named in the historic joint state-federal settlement include Ally/GMAC, Bank of America, Citi, JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo. The National Mortgage Settlement office says, since the March 2012 settlement was announced, only Ally has met its consumer relief obligations. The settlement calls for the five banks to provide $25 billion in relief to distressed borrowers.
Even though recent numbers show more than $45 billion in gross mortgage relief, much of the relief is in short sales and extinguishments, which are not credited as 'dollar for dollar.'
