loanDepot this week launched a digital mortgage product, mello smartloan, promising quick turn times for more than half of its loan applicants. The nonbank lender claims borrowers can now close their mortgages in just eight days.
Although employment in the mortgage industry has been fairly robust the past few years, it’s been a dicey proposition for real estate appraisers. According to figures compiled by the Appraisal Institute, a national trade group that represents the sector, there were 82,208 active license holders at last count, down 8.1% from four years earlier.
As mortgage profits weaken, two banks that have had a foothold in residential finance for several decades are taking different paths. One, TIAA Bank, Jacksonville, FL, is exiting traditional retail but staying in the mortgage space. The other, Provident Savings Bank, Riverside, CA, is getting out entirely.
The majority of lenders now offer a front-end digital mortgage process for borrowers but there is considerable variability in adoption rates for various back-end processes, a survey by Strategic Mortgage Finance Group showed.
Commercial banks and savings institutions made money on their mortgage banking activity during the fourth quarter, but not that much. [Includes one data chart.]
Mortgage lenders that deliver loans into Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage-backed securities continued to face relatively few repurchase demands from the two government-sponsored enterprises last year. [Includes two data charts.]
To paraphrase Mark Twain: Rumors of HARP’s death have been greatly exaggerated. At least that’s the finding of a recent report by structured finance analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch who looked the impact similar programs will have on the GSEs’ credit-risk transfer programs.
The uniform MBS is scheduled to launch in just over three months, but there is still some confusion about how it will affect investors in the to-be-announced market. Earlier this month, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association and the Investment Company Institute, in a joint letter, urged the Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department to clarify certain diversification requirements under the single security initiative.
The Federal Home Loans Banks’ combined net income for the fourth quarter fell to $791 million, an 8.7% decline from the fourth quarter of 2017. Year-over-year, net income rose slightly to $3.56 billion in 2018. But this apparent stability masked dramatic swings elsewhere on the income statement. [Includes one data chart.]
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