“The human brain is the most amazing organ in the human body. It works 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, from birth up until the moment that you buy your first NFT.” Money, some say, makes the world go ‘round. Last week we all learned that net production income for independent mortgage bankers fell to a $301 loss (13 basis points) for all of 2022, according to the MBA, a series low for the index which began in 2008. Marina Walsh, CMB, MBA’s VP of Industry Analysis, sagely observed, “The stellar profits of the previous two years dissipated because of declining volume, lower revenues, and higher costs per loan (which hit $10,624 per loan).” True: 1.5 closed loans a month per production employee stinks. LD knows a thing or two about rough times, and the industry took note of loanDepot’s settlement and cooperation agreement with Anthony Hsieh, its founder, chairman, former CEO, and largest shareholder. (LD is now trading around $1.52/share af
Hey, why wouldn’t you want to join the Mortgage Action Alliance? It doesn’t cost you a penny, and there’s strength in numbers. Signing up takes about 90 seconds. And the information you receive is much more reliable than mine! The U.S. Census Bureau produces some reliable information, unless you’re some conspiracy theory nut, and they have information that loan officers love: where most owners are free and clear of any home loan. And 30-year rates, which probably won’t be down to 2.75 percent again in our lifetimes, are less expensive than credit card debt, so there is business to be had. California has 2.4 million households free-and-clear of mortgage debt, the third-highest count among the states. There’s Texas at 2.9 million, and Florida at 2.5 million. After California comes New York at 1.7 million and Pennsylvania at 1.5 million. West Virginia has the largest share of free-and-clear owners at 53%, followed by Mississippi at 51%, North Dako
“Where can you always find money? In the dictionary.” Plenty of lenders and finding the money to buy other companies while smaller ones are looking for the right buyer. Eat or be eaten seems to be the name of the game as lenders hungry for production are courting other lenders. Some just get out of the game entirely. (See lender and investor section below.) Cutting costs and being efficient continue to be of paramount importance regardless of plans for the future. Is the credit process cost effective and efficient? Yesterday I mentioned changes in the credit world and received, “Rob, when will companies learn that there are ‘too many snouts in the credit trough’? There’s Fair Isaac, the Bureaus, and the credit resellers. It is not a level playing field, and now, like the old days of having different gfees for different lenders, lenders are slotted into ‘tiers’. In the next few years, we’ll be moving from a tri-merge environ