Mortgage bankers rode a wave of rising loan production to big increases in profitability during the first quarter of 2015, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s quarterly Mortgage Bankers Performance Report. Average pretax income for firms participating in the survey was $2.246 million, a whopping 149.3 percent increase from the fourth quarter. That was the highest pretax profit since the second quarter of 2013, when lenders earned ...