Mortgage bankers of all sizes continued to report strong earnings on their mortgage banking operations during the fourth quarter of 2012, but the salad days may be over.
Although mortgage profits reported for the fourth quarter, so far, have been strong, trouble may lie ahead for the sector with lower gain-on-sale margins and moderately contracting spreads, according to analysts at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods.
Inside Mortgage Finance shortly will publish its final 4Q ranking of FHA lenders, but it appears that the October-December period was one of the strongest in terms of loan production in quite some time ...plus other mortgage briefs.
Relatively new players to the world of Fannie Mae approvals are starting to gripe a little more about the “volume curbs” that the GSE is placing on its “newbie” customers. One mortgage banker, who spoke under the condition his name not be used, told Inside Mortgage Finance ...
Cooperatives or “affinity groups” are keeping quiet on what effect recent changes made by Fannie Mae regarding volume discounts will have on their businesses. To date, the three most widely recognized lender co-ops – Capital Markets Cooperative, Lenders One, and America’s Mortgage Cooperative – have said little or nothing on the situation, at least publicly. However, mortgage bankers close to the issue say it could affect Lenders One the most since the company once promoted a pricing advantage it enjoyed as a marketing tool. Some cooperatives charge members for their services upfront, while others only receive a percentage of the value derived from each secondary market transaction.
Mortgage lenders large and small continued to report strong earnings on their mortgage banking operations during the fourth quarter of 2012, but the year that likely will go down as the most profitable in the industry’s history ended on a downslope. A new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of year-end earnings reports from 23 lenders reveals a staggering combined earnings of $32.74 billion for the full year of 2012. The same group posted an aggregate net income of $5.35 billion, a total ... [Includes one data chart]
There is reason to believe the mortgage banking industry’s record level of profitability may have peaked, as gain-on-sale margins have already begun to slip and more dark clouds appear on the horizon. “Mortgage banks have enjoyed record high gain-on-sale margins over the past several quarters,” analysts at Compass Point Research and Trading noted in a recent market review. They attributed this trend mostly to two primary factors: limited capacity in the mortgage market to handle increased demand and ...
One after another, it appears that residential lenders are dipping their toes back into the correspondent lending channel, thanks in part to the fat profit margins tied to securitization and retaining the underlying servicing rights. Over the past few weeks, a handful of lenders announced their intention to either launch a correspondent lending division or jumbo conduit. Firms entering the correspondent space include Envoy Mortgage and Real Estate Mortgage Network. The conduit ... [Includes one data chart]
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