Client Bulletin: December 19, 2024

Holiday Schedule: Important Information on What to Expect

Christmas

Cenlar will be closed on Wednesday, December 25, 2024, for Christmas. Any files received on December 25, 2024 will not be processed until the night of December 26. Reports and extracts will be available the morning of December 27.

Representatives at our call centers will be available to assist homeowners until 5 p.m. ET on Christmas Eve, Dec. 24. Call centers will resume normal operations on Thursday, Dec. 26.

New Year’s Day
Cenlar also will be closed on, Wednesday, January 1, 2025, for New Year’s. Any files received on January 1 will not be processed until the night of January 2, 2025. Reports and extracts will be available the morning of January 3.

Representatives at our call centers will be available to assist homeowners until 5 p.m. ET on New Year’s Eve, Dec. 31. Call centers will resume normal operations on Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025.

2025 Holiday Schedule
For a full 2025 reporting schedule and other important holiday information, be sure to check our first Bulletin of 2025, due out Monday, Jan. 13.

Please reach out to your client manager with any questions.

FHA PSA Notice

FHA has added a step to their COVID-19 Recovery Home Retention Options called the Payment Supplement Agreement (“PSA”). The PSA, scheduled to begin on Jan. 1, 2025, is a FHA offering that is designed to address instances when modification cannot achieve the minimum required P&I reduction.

 

How PSA Works

This option will temporarily reduce the homeowner’s monthly mortgage payment for a period of three years, without requiring the mortgage to be modified. Homeowners receiving a Payment Supplement will have Partial Claim funds applied to their arrearage in the same manner as the standalone Partial Claim and then receive a monthly payment reduction to cover a portion of the principal due with the homeowner’s monthly mortgage payment for that three-year period.

If the targeted P&I relief can’t be met, a minimum Monthly Payment Reduction would need to be reached and then reviewed against the relief provided by a COVID-19 Recovery Modification. If the PSA option provides a greater payment reduction, then it would be approved.

Cenlar will apply partial claim funds monthly from a designated account to the P&I upon receipt of a mortgage payment from the homeowner.

Documentation of the PSA is similar to that of a COVID-19 Standalone Recovery Partial Claim.

PSA Fee
Cenlar has been working on creating a process for executing on the PSA to best support eligible homeowners. An administrative fee of $750, in addition to contractual decisioning & dispositioning fees where applicable, will be assessed on each completed case.

Please reach out to your client manager with any questions.

Important Dates to Know for Year End

As the end of 2024 fast approaches, we are hard at work making sure tax season goes seamlessly for you and your homeowners.

Client Year-End Deadlines and Dates
Please make note of the following important deadlines and dates for clients:

• The deadline for clients to make pre-year-end corrections to homeowner 1098s was Friday, Dec. 13. Correction Requests received after Dec. 13 will be subject to a cost of $15 per loan, and we cannot guarantee they will be completed prior to Dec. 31. If you need to submit corrections, please send the request through CCM. (General Servicing/Year End/Bulk 1098 Corrections/Pre-Year End Correction).
• All loans closed in 2024 must be boarded by Monday, Jan. 6, 2025.
  Our 1098 reports for 2024 will be available to share with clients by Feb. 15, 2025.

 

Homeowner 1098 Communication Campaign
Your homeowners will begin receiving emails from us soon to proactively inform them of what to expect come tax season. The first of these messages lets homeowners know that their 1098 will be coming soon.

We will begin posting 1098s on CenNet on Jan. 8, 2025, for all homeowners who have enrolled in paperless. These homeowners will receive an email from us with a link to their 1098 as soon as it is available to access. We will also post a link on the CenNet landing page that will bring homeowners directly to their 1098s. Please note that homeowners who have enrolled in paperless will not receive a paper copy of their 1098; they will only receive their 1098 online.

Paper 1098s will be mailed to all homeowners who have not elected to go paperless between Jan. 10 and Jan. 31, 2025.

Cenlar Reporting Root Cause Analysis

On Monday, December 2, Cenlar discovered month-end reporting was not completed properly. As a result, reporting from December 2 was delayed. Reporting for both the month of November and Monday, December 2 was finished on the evening of Wednesday, December 4.

 

Recently, Cenlar has been working to improve the efficiency of our monthly reporting process when a given month ends on a non-business day – either a holiday or weekend. At the end of November, those efforts created a reporting issue. We are adding additional controls to ensure we avoid such a delay in the future.

Document Changes on CenAccess

We’re continuing to tweak the organization of our documents on CenAccess to make them easier for our clients to recognize and use. Recently, we made two changes to homeowner communications files under Training & Reference -> User Manuals. Here you’ll find a new file of homeowner text messages (Text_Listing_for_Clients_20241023) and a renamed file of homeowner emails (List_of_Borrower_Emails.20240916).

 

Additionally, we’ve moved the documents formerly found under the About section to a new location. You can now find them under Training and Reference, Servicing System Reference.