Loan Think

Who says retail lending is more expensive than wholesale production? Well, actually, JPMorgan Chase does. In its new earnings statement JPM notes that it spent an additional $82 million in 4Q (compared to 3Q) due to higher residential production costs: increased retail expenses and "enhanced" loan underwriting. JPM has been out of wholesale for two years now.

It's exhausting reading all those articles about marketing, product development, public relations, motivation and every business discipline one can imagine. Every so often there's an article that discusses sales or something relative to selling. All of these authors and motivators have their priorities backward.

What thoughts should guide ongoing Congressional consideration on housing finance? Let's start with this one: "It is increasingly clear that the Fed and the U.S. government's entwinement with the housing market is one of the greatest economic distortions on earth" (as the Lex Column of the Financial Times wrote).

One of the joys of living in South Florida is spending New Year's Day at the beach. This year when walking along the shore I came across a sand crab making its way toward the water. My grandchildren were fascinated by the fact that the crab didn't walk forward, but sideways. Every time my grandchildren got close, the crab stuck its head into its shell, thereby making no progress at all.

So you've written this really cool article. You want to world to know about it. But just the thought of "getting it out there" is overwhelming.

As Wells Fargo goes, so goes the mortgage industry. Well, not exactly, but it needs to be pointed out once in a while just how much of a dominant player this megabank is in mortgage finance. In the third quarter it ranked first among all lenders, which is no secret, but in the correspondent channel it bought $41.1 billion of loans from other firms - almost triple its next closest competitor, Bank of America.

The real estate industry's data standards organization embarks on a new chapter as a standalone group.

Most Americans are probably glad to see 2011 slip into the past, or at least those who own homes are. 2012 may hold the promise of a return to rising home values, something that didn’t happen last year.

The number of words written about the REO industry in 2011 makes 'War and Peace' seem like a Reader's Digest short story. So what's new for 2012? Good question ... tough answer.

Oh the indignity of it all: On Tuesday afternoon insurance giant MetLife -- the folks who market their business using Snoopy, Linus and Charlie Brown -- told 4,300 mortgage workers to take a hike. Then, the very next morning it publishes a statement saying another unit of the company bought a luxury rental apartment building in Chicago's North River neighborhood.