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Inside Mortgage Trends

June 16, 2017

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Banks and Thrifts Continue to Backpedal From Mortgage Servicing Market in 1Q17

The banking industry retreated a little further from the business of servicing mortgages for other investors during the first quarter of 2017, although a change in reporting requirements made the change look a little bigger than it really was. A new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of bank call reports shows that commercial banks and savings institutions serviced a total of $3.640 trillion of home mortgages for other investors, typically mortgage-backed securities trusts. These are mortgage servicing rights that the bank owns; in some cases a third party may perform the actual servicing and in others the bank may provide subservicing on MSR it doesn’t own. The March servicing-for-others figure was...[Includes one data table] Read More

Mortgage Banking Profits Squeezed in 1Q17

Profit margins and net income fell sharply in the mortgage banking business during early 2017, according to new data from the Mortgage Bankers Association. On average, firms participating in the MBA’s quarterly performance report earned just $886,000 in pretax income during the first quarter, a hefty 74.8 percent drop from the previous period. Only about two firms in three (67.0 percent) managed to report net pretax income for the first three months of the year. The industry funded... Read More

Some Lenders Keep Hiring; Others Are Cautious

The spring and summer home-buying season is in full throttle and with rates falling to yearly lows, mortgage bankers should be hiring in droves. Right? Not necessarily. Top-ranked lenders such as Quicken Loans and Movement Mortgage report they continue to search for new talent, but others are being careful about their hiring plans. Employment in the mortgage brokerage sector has been... Read More

Complaint Trends Have Much to Teach Lenders

There are three important trends in the consumer complaint space, each bearing important lessons for mortgage lenders, regardless of size or structure, according to top compliance experts. Speaking to an audience at the American Bankers Association’s annual regulatory compliance conference in Orlando earlier this week, Carol Hunley, deputy chief compliance officer at Ally Financial Services, detailed each of them and their significance for lender compliance. First, the lending environment is... Read More

First-Time Buyers, Millennials Drive Home Sales

First-time homebuyers have fueled a surge in home sales in the last two years, and the trend is continuing into 2017, according to a new report on the first-time homebuyer market from Genworth Mortgage Insurance. The report focused on mortgage origination data from more than 20 million first-time homebuyers over the past 24 years, with some interesting findings. Approximately 85 percent of the overall increase in home sales over the past two years was... Read More

Retail Maintained Refi Focus in 1Q17

The retail production channel continued to churn out an unusually large volume of refinance loans during the first quarter of 2017, according to an Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of loan-level data on mortgage-backed securities issued by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae during the period. Some 60.5 percent of retail originations were refinance loans, compared to just 37.6 percent of correspondent production. The analysis excluded modified loans, mortgages with no identified channel and loans more… Read More

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