As industry interest in mortgage defaults and REO disposition has surged, so too has a greater need for standardization and process management — unlike the origination side of the business, which tends to offer at least some minimal licensing and education standards for market participants (witness the CMB designation from the Mortgage Bankers Association), the default and REO side of the business have little in the way of third-party designations. Want to list REOs? Good luck. You’ll need to break into closed and often private membership groups, and learn procedures that aren’t published anywhere — precisely because those that already work in the space often want to keep outsiders just that. One company is making an effort to break the code, however, at least for corporate clients. Frederick, Maryland-based Default Resource, Inc. has rolled out what it’s calling Default School, which provides both online and traditional training for the corporate REO seller and their brokers and agents. Default Resource head of business development Frank Marshall said last week that the company recently added nine new corporate clients to its Default School offering, bringing the company’s roster to four of the nation’s top 15 mortgage servicers, four process outsourcing management firms, and one of the GSEs. He declined to name whether the company was working with Fannie Mae (FNM) or Freddie Mac (FRE) — but given that one of the company’s newly-hired execs was the former director of REO at Fannie Mae, we’ll let HW readers do the math. Default School offers REO best practices and advanced property valuation courses, in addition to customizable client-specific online courses. The custom courses focus on the individual client’s business culture, mission and tenets, as well as REO agent policies & procedures, supplier code of conduct, technology, and performance metrics. Training material is delivered in a secure web environment with state of the art technology. In addition to its training initiatives, Default Resource also offers third-party valuation services to clients, via its Mark-to-Market service. For more information, visit http://www.defaultschool.com and http://www.defaultresource.com.

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