Loan Think

John Robbins, the ageless former chairman of the Mortgage Bankers Association, is reentering the residential finance business with a new company called Bexil American Mortgage, a retail/wholesale lender. But will it actually service loans?

At the MBA convention in Chicago today consultant Brian Chappelle of Potomac Partners said it best when he noted that Congress, regulators (and the White House) are "going after the whole mortgage system for problems that no longer exist, and that has a suffocating effect on the marketplace."

With the untimely passing of Steve Jobs last week, the world lost one of its master marketers.

The California Department of Industrial Relations alleges that over a four-year period, ZipRealty paid its real estate agent employees “less than the minimum wage and no premium for overtime hours worked” because the real estate brokerage improperly classified its agents as outside contractors. The lawsuit requests at least $7.5 million in wages, $1.25 million in overtime and $9 million in penalties.

It's only been 10 days, but lenders in the primary market are starting to feel the effects of lower GSE loan limits. Ilan Awerbach, a vice president at UniTrust Mortgage of San Diego tells us that the "lower loan limits are definitely being felt here in California -- as I imagine they are on both coasts."

This past week National Mortgage News broke several updates on the bank, including its decision to exit FHA/VA cash-out refis, the collapse of talks with Fortress over its correspondent unit, its decision to exit six states, and the departure of one of its top retail LOs, Kevin Budde.

Ex-Presidents seem to love the mortgage industry. After seeing former President George W. Bush at a recent industry show in Dallas, I have now seen all the living ex-presidents in mortgage-related sightings!

As Bank of America continues to lop off mortgage divisions, and lets its retail residential work force wither away there is renewed talk that it may finally throw Countrywide Funding Corp. -- the mortgage banker it bought three years ago -- into bankruptcy.

Yesterday we broke the news that Bank of America will exit six states in retail lending: Alabama, Alaska, Montana, Nebraska, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. But wait a second, aren't some of these states among the best performing in terms of home prices?

So, is the mortgage industry really deconsolidating, something we've been writing about for the past nine months? Answer: it would appear that way.