Citigroup's North American residential mortgage business seems to be treading water in terms of originations and servicing.
The New York-based bank funded $11 billion of single-family loans in the second quarter, down 22% from the prior period, but only a 2% drop from 2Q10, according to earnings figures released Friday morning.
Citigroup's consumer banking operation in the U.S. holds $196.5 billion of third-party mortgage servicing rights, up only 3% from a year ago.
Meanwhile, Citigroup continues to reduce the legacy assets it placed into a separate unit called Citi Holdings. At June 30 CH held $308 billion of assets including nearly $120 billion of first mortgages and home equity loans. Over the past year, CH has reduced its first mortgage holdings by 19% to $73.2 billion through sales and runoff.
The remaining first mortgages have a 5.5% serious delinquency rate (90 days or more past due).
The serious delinquency rate is down 50% from a year ago, according to Citigroup chief executive officer John Gerspach. "The decline in first mortgage delinquencies is primary due to continuing asset sales as we sold nearly $800 million in delinquent mortgages in the quarter," he said during Friday's conference call.
The serious delinquency rate on the $42.8 billion in HELs was 2.4% as of June 30.
