While Astoria Financial’s first quarter net income fell by $17 million on a year-over-year basis, its reemergence in the multifamily/commercial real estate lending space is skyrocketing.
The thrift, which ranks among the nation’s largest, increased MF/CRE originations by 70% from the fourth quarter to $344 million in 1Q. More impressively, its pipeline of loans in progress doubled during the quarter to $799 million.
Because of the success in MF/CRE lending, Astoria's loan portfolio grew for the first time in several years during the quarter, by $106 million and now totals $13.4 billion, said president and CEO Monte Redman.
However Astoria's residential mortgage portfolio dropped by $16 million to $10.5 billion during the quarter. Prepayments totaled $767 million, compared with $786 million one year prior.
First quarter residential mortgage originations totaled $880 million, up from $707 million in 1Q 2011.
While prepayments remain at elevated levels, "they have not accelerated despite the low mortgage rate environment, which has helped stem the decline in the residential loan portfolio," Redman said, announcing 1Q results.
Astoria reported residential non-performing loans of $312.2 million and MF/CRE NPLs of $36.9 at March 31, compared with $317.9 million and $8.9 million, respectively, at Dec. 31, 2011.
As for the rest of 2012, Redman said Astoria will be "concentrating more on higher yielding multifamily loans than on lower yielding residential loans."
