Loan Think

Much has been written about mortgage sales people needing to create a social media marketing strategy. It is a great way to get positive buzz about the services provided.

In the first part of May, a prominent Realtor, her son and daughter-in-law pleaded guilty to an expanding mortgage fraud that enabled them to buy expensive vacation homes at Alabama’s Gulf Shores using “straw borrowers” to qualify for credit union loans. Lenders victimized by the scheme were First Tennessee Bank, U.S. Bank and First Choice Funding.

It’s a holiday weekend in the middle of year, and as summer approaches what better time to preview our ’Five Mortgage Firms to Keep an Eye On (And Why)’ report. A more extensive analysis of these five (and five additional companies) will appear next month on the MortgageStats.com website, which features up-to-the minute rankings, analysis and more.

Certain Luddites and ignoramuses in Congress believe we should go back to the ‘Good Old Days’ when our banks and thrifts held mortgages in portfolio. They don’t quite understand the whole concept of a mismatch between assets (mortgages) and liabilities (deposits.)

Investor, speculator and short seller David Einhorn is ponying up $200 million to buy a minority stake in The New York Mets baseball team. Why is this mortgage news?

As we all know, subprime securitization will return – someday. Of course, none of us know when that day will be. When it comes to creating mortgage bonds out of loans made to consumers with poor credit, many folks I’ve talked to think we’re looking at three to five years, at least.

At the end of March mortgage servicers were processing $9.5 trillion in residential loans, a 4% decline from the same period a year ago. (Figures courtesy of National Mortgage News and the Quarterly Data Report.) Now, 4% may not seem like a huge number, but then again, you have to consider historical trends.

When it comes to the social media, one of the themes I have consistently written is that you just can't have a policy of throwing things against the wall and hoping that some, if not all, of it sticks.

We were talking to MBS inventor Lew Ranieri this morning and he had some interesting things to say about rates. He noted that if Spain cannot solve its debt woes (I assume you saw the protests in Madrid last week) that bond holders worldwide may flock into Treasuries, which means rates would fall even further in the U.S.

Homeowners can use a little known but increasingly popular provision of the bankruptcy code to eliminate second mortgages and avoid foreclosure. Statistics are hard to come by, but the provision has been used effectively on hundreds, if not thousands, of cases during the past two years.