Mortgage bankers ended a very good year in 2016 on a somewhat offbeat note as overall company profits sagged and production margins shrank. The average mortgage-banking operation generated $3.513 million in pretax income during the fourth quarter of 2016, according to the latest data from the Mortgage Bankers Association. That was down 10.8 percent from the average pretax income in the trade group’s third-quarter Mortgage Bankers Performance report ...