South By North Strategies, Ltd.

New York Times business columnist Gretchen Morgenson recently explained the efforts of U.S. Rep. Brad Miller of North Carolina to eliminate conflicts of interest involving mortgage servicers.

The problem:

So where does the conflict of interest lie? Often, the same bank that services a primary mortgage owned by another institution also owns a second mortgage or home equity line of credit on the same property. When that borrower has trouble meeting both payments, the servicer has an interest in making sure that amounts owed on the second lien, which it owns, continue to be paid even if the first loan, which it has no interest in, slides into delinquency. About two-thirds of primary mortgages are serviced by banks who do not own them but hold the accompanying seconds.
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This conflict is a crucial reason that the government’s loan modification program has been so woefully ineffective. The Treasury Department never forced the second-lien holders who service troubled primary mortgages to reduce the amount they are owed by borrowers, even though such a move would give them a better shot at keeping their homes.

Rep. Miller’s proposed solution:

“Unless we can make servicers modify mortgages through bankruptcy or eminent domain, the servicers are not going to reduce principle,” Mr. Miller, 57, said in a recent interview. “Their stance does seem largely driven by accounting concerns — they are trying to maintain the fiction that the mortgages are worth the value they are carrying them at on their books.”
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Enter Mr. Miller’s bill, the Mortgage Servicing Conflict of Interest Elimination Act. It bars servicers of first loans they do not own from holding any other mortgages on the same property.
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The bill would give these institutions a reasonable amount of time to divest either their servicing businesses or their interests in home mortgages, Mr. Miller said. A likely outcome is that the four biggest banks would spin off their mortgage servicing operations. This would not only resolve the conflict between loan servicers and investors, but it would also result in smaller, less complex banks, he said. That is surely a major benefit.