Investors have pooled their resources and are engaging in a major effort to force repurchases by the big-bank servicers.

The current mortgage paperwork scandal adds more fuel to the fire as major servicers have halted foreclosures because of potential paperwork irregularities around the country. Concerns are also growing that banks may not have properly transferred loans into the mortgage pools in the first place. "This deficient approach undermines the integrity and the operational framework of the housing finance and mortgage system as it exists today," the Association of Mortgage Investors wrote in a press release [...]

Investors from across the country have been coordinating legal strategies for over a year, with the effort ramping up in early spring, according to (Bill Frey, who runs the securities firm Greenwich Financial Services). Since then, more and more investors have formed a loose consortium, gaining momentum "like a snowball going downhill," he says. In the last month alone, the group added other investors that own an additional $100 billion in mortgage bonds.

They have not filed any suits yet, Frey says, because the group is first trying to grow even more. Also, since each investor group has different, nonmortgage business with the banks, some investors have conflicting interests in how to proceed, he says. The consortium now represents investors that own more than $600 billion in mortgage securities, which is around a third of the entire mortgage securitization market. The group includes 65 major mortgage investors; Bloomberg reported that large investment companies including Black Rock, PIMCO and Fortress are part of the effort, as are the quasi-governmental Fannie Mae and the Federal Home Loan Banks, which both own private securitized loans.

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One attorney out of Texas is putting together a clearinghouse for investors to keep track of the different mortgage pools. They now claim the authority to act in over 2,300 cases. One more of these dropped yesterday:

Today, the holders of over 25% of the Voting Rights in more than $47 billion of Countrywide-issued RMBS sent a Notice of Non-Performance (Notice) to Countrywide Home Loan Servicing, as Master Servicer ("Countrywide Servicing"), and to Bank of New York, as Trustee, identifying specific covenants in 115 Pooling and Servicing Agreements (PSAs) that the Holders allege Countrywide Servicing has failed to perform.

The Holders' Notice alleges that each of these failures has materially affected the rights of the Certificateholders under the relevant PSAs. Under Section 7.01 of the PSAs, if any of the cited failures "continues unremedied for a period of 60 days after the date on which written notice of such failure has been given ... to the Master Servicer and the Trustee by the Holders of Certificates evidencing not less than 25% of the Voting Rights evidenced by the Certificates," that failure constitutes an Event of Default under the PSAs.