Keeping track of Ocwen Financial activity in the mortgage market is a fascinating challenge, which even some of the best of us can get wrong.
Specialty servicers for years have been purchasing MSRs from banks who didn't want the capital and legal burden.
We've covered the exponential growth extensively here at HousingWire and admit it can get really confusing with so many moving parts.
Bill Erbey, Ocwen CEO, is in the center of that storm, and you can see why regulators are becoming convinced the sophisticated operation is running circles around them.
Just try explaining offshoots like Altisource Asset Management, AltisourcePortfolio Solutions, Altisource Residential, and Home Loan Servicing Solutions. Go on. You might just black out in the process.
So it's no disrespect meant when Quartz finance reporter Mark DeCambre takes an honest shot at it and also comes out a little confused. And somewhere out there there is an equally quizzicalled Quartz editor (been there myself a few times).
Here's the headline:
This shadow bank’s explosive growth in mortgage lending makes regulators nervous
and a quote:
"The emergence of non-traditional bank lenders (paywall) in the home lending market has drawn intense scrutiny from regulators, and a look at the eye-popping growth of one non-bank mortgage lender, Ocwen Financial, can help explain why," DeCambre explains.
DeCambre again mentions lending three times in the above example, even though Ocwen can hardly be described as a mortgage lender. And it's not its lending practices that are in question at all.
How could such a prominent financial website so easily confuse the origination and servicing industries? At the end of the road it's that very serpentine business model that has the regulators concerned.
(Using a stock photo with Century 21 and Hudson and Marshall signs to accompany the story is also perplexing, though I've done a few of those myself.)
