Loan Think

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.

Election time is like the Wild West: anything can, and will, happen. Yesterday our page views went through the roof when we blogged about GOP hopeful Mitt Romney floating the idea of getting rid of HUD. So far, Romney hasn't backed down from the idea (that we know of), but professionals who are serious about this industry know full well that killing HUD at this point in the recovery would cause housing to crater yet again.

A recent survey from staffing firm Robert Half International finds many chief financial officers believe their office environment has been successful in their Candace role of stifling worker creativity.

If GOP hopeful Mitt Romney has his way HUD will be killed and presumably so will the FHA program. It's election season and the candidate - hoping to appeal to conservatives - wants to stick a knife in HUD/FHA because, well, it's a cabinet level agency and cutting big government is a red meat move.

The great Charlie "Tremendous" Jones is very well known for this quote: "You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read." Because I am a voracious reader, I have always focused more on the "reading" portion of this quote.

Most financial institutions would probably say that the National Labor Relations Board is the least of their worries. That may be changing.