Loan Think

Move over Chase Manhattan Mortgage. For several years now Chase has been the number one ranked correspondent lender in the U.S. (on the buy side) but when Washington Mutual, Seattle, completes its purchase of HomeSide, Jacksonville, Fla., this quarter it will eclipse Chase's volume by several billion dollars. According to the Quarterly Data Report , WaMu/HomeSide produced $34.19 billion through the correspondent channel in Q4 compared to Chase's $27.9 billion...

By 2020 the mortgage industry should be posting "economic" profits of $79 billion, according to a new report released by Morgan Stanley analyst Ken Posner. This compares to $15.3 billion in economic profits earned by the industry in 2000…

Slip Sliding away: In the third quarter G.E. Capital Mortgage Insurance, Raleigh, N.C., ranked fourth among the seven mortgage insurers in terms of new policies written. GECMI wrote $11.71 billion in new policies, followed closely behind by United Guaranty, Greensboro, with $10.2 billion. It's hard to say if GECMI soon will slip to number five. (Fourth quarter rankings will be available in National Mortgage News shortly.) Two recent events could boost its fortunes: new capital regs for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could force the two GSEs into doing more business with both GECMI and UGI because both are AAA-rated (thanks to their parent firms) while the other five are AA-rated. The irony here is that GECMI is key player in FM Watch, an anti-Fannie/Freddie lobbying group. GECMI also could gain business if "GNMA Choice" legislation because operative. However, the Choice legislation is thought to be a long shot for this year...

For as long as we can remember Prism Mortgage, Chicago, has been a bread-and-butter retail lender. But all of that's about to change. Terry Rowland, who was recently hired away from Pedestal, has been charged with taking the retail giant into the wonderful world of wholesaling. Details aren't yet available on what exactly Prism will be doing in the wholesale arena, but stay tuned. (Prism, by the way, is a subsidiary of Royal Bank of Canada)…

Residential lenders are starting to report their loan volumes for the fourth quarter and the numbers -- to say the least -- look good. Among wholesalers, firms with stellar fourth quarter numbers include Principal Residential Mortgage (up 458%), and B.F. Saul Mortgage (up 280%). Final fourth quarter rankings will be published by National Mortgage News and should be ready by mid-February...

Are mortgage rates headed lower? On Friday Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said "significant'' near-term risk remains for the U.S. economy, which means theFed likely will cut rates again at its next meeting. Mr. Greenspan's comments caused a mini sell-off in stockswhich sent investors scrambling for bonds. Falling interest rates could extend what's already been a robust refinancingmarker...

There has been a bit of a controversy about a $2.5 million line of credit that Freddie Mac made to LendingTree, Charlotte, the online loan marketplace, but few realize that LendingTree has yet to draw upon that line. A company official noted recently that LendingTree has borrowed $2 million of a $15 million line made to the company by G.E. Capital. Lending Tree hopes to be profitable in the second quarter...

Industry executives continue to talk about what kind of pricing power Washington Mutual, Seattle, will have in the secondary market once it swallows both HomeSide, Jacksonville, and Dime Bancorp, New York, the parent of North American Mortgage. The big question is what type of guarantee fee deal WaMu can extract out of Fannie Mae which buys most of WaMu's conventional production. G-fees are a major driver of earnings for both Fannie and Freddie Mac. During the first nine months of this year Fannie earned $1.084 billion off of g-fees. In the third quarter Fannie had average g-fee income of 19.2 basis points, Freddie 18.5 basis points...

Short sellers are increasing their bets against American Home Mortgage Holdings Inc., a Long-Island-basedindependent retail lender. At mid-November (the most recent figures available) speculators had sold short 1.19million shares in American Home, a 33% increase over 30 days. On Friday, American's shares were selling for about$12.70 a share, compared to a 52-week high of $22 and a low of $4. Mortgage stocks tend to do better during a recessionbecause rates usually stay low. Do speculators see an end to the recession which means higher rates?…

Lost among all the hoopla this past week of Washington Mutual buying HomeSide (sans its $187 billion in servicing) is the potential leverage it gives the nation's number three lender (soon to be number one) over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. If Fannie's average guarantee fee is 19 basis points or so, how much of a discount do you think WaMu's chairman Kerry Killinger will ask for&