Loan Think

In a few weeks we’ll know whether the Treasury Department’s third largest investment in housing/mortgages will file for bankruptcy protection. I’m talking about Residential Capital Corp./GMAC, which recently missed a bond payment and has 30-days to make good on it.

Until recently, the deterioration of properties didn’t pique the interest of servicing agencies until it was clearly designated REO and, until recently, this was all well and good. But the winds have changed.

Randall Craig, a Toronto-based social media marketing expert, said marketing campaigns using Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and the like, can be measured through the following four approaches.

Sometimes I go in circles. I do marketing, my phone rings, I get busy, I stop marketing. I close loans, I realize my phone isn't ringing as much so I start all over. My new goal is to go in a straight line.

While it is evident that loans are receiving a great deal of scrutiny these days, it is also true that appraisal reports are generally viewed most closely for the value they recommend, not the detail they contain.

Late last week, I talked to one mortgage analyst who said some firms he’s looked at earned more money in the first quarter than they did all of last year. That’s great news for the mortgage industry, but of course this one anecdote does not apply to all.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau poked its thumb in the eye of residential loan officers originating mortgages for depositories.

In the recently released CFPB enforcement guide, the newly formed agency clearly announced that it expected lenders to begin to institutionalize compliance to enhance monitoring, training and avoidance of errors and complaints. Federal agencies are already beginning to internalize this self-policing perspective.

It's no secret that over the past three years the megabanks have run screaming from the third-party lending sector, abandoning correspondent lenders and loan brokers alike. Bank of America and TPO: Gone. Citigroup and TPO: gone. Ally Financial: Just about gone. But there's a growing trend of mid-sized and regional banks that see a huge opportunity in wholesale and correspondent.

Between everything you do - family, friends, hobbies, work, play, lessons, school, well, you name it - you probably don’t have one spare minute in your life.