Introduction to the National Mortgage Settlements Digital Archive
In late 2016, The Kathrine R. Everett Law Library acquired a set of documents from the Office of Mortgage Settlement Oversight and from Joseph A. Smith, Jr. Monitoring related to settlements made between state attorneys general, the Department of Justice, and institutions involved in the mortgage servicing and mortgage origination industries. The settlements resulted from activities by the servicers and lenders that played a role in the housing crisis of the late 2000s. These documents are now available as a part of the National Mortgage Settlements Digital Archive, which is hosted within the Carolina Law Scholarship Repository.
The settlements with mortgage servicers created new legal standards in the area prior to the January 2014 effective date of the initial mortgage servicing rules promulgated by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (or Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, as it is now known), and established a monitoring regime carried out by the Office of Mortgage Settlement Oversight. This digital collection contains court filings and public-facing reports, all of which can easily be accessed from the Servicing Settlements page. There is also more detailed information about the servicing settlements available on that site, and from the main page you can browse, read, and download any document in the collection. If you are experiencing difficulty doing any of the technical things, please see our Frequently Asked Questions page.
Our collection of the settlements involving mortgage originators (also known as Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities, or RMBS, settlements) is much more limited at this point. Originators entered into the settlements individually and the courts have appointed different monitors for each. Currently, we have only obtained documents related to the settlement with JPMorgan Chase, which was monitored by Joseph A. Smith, Jr. Monitoring. More information is available on our Origination Settlements page.
Finally, you can access an archived version of the OMSO website as it existed during the monitoring period.