Residential Originations by Thrifts Plunged in 1Q

Thrifts originated $27.2 billion of single-family loans during the first quarter, down nearly 70% from the same period a year ago, according to new figures released by the Office of Thrift Supervision. In the fourth quarter, the OTS-supervised thrifts originated $34.4 billion in one-to-four family loans. On a positive note, OTS acting director John Bowman noted that troubled loans are beginning to stabilize at thrifts. The seriously delinquency rate on single-family loans crept up 3 basis points to 5.16% in the first quarter, 2 bps to 3.39% on multifamily loans, but jumped 69 bps to 14.2% on construction loans. Nevertheless, thrifts reported a decline in net charge-offs and loan loss provisioning as well as a $1.82 billion profit for the first quarter, compared to a $1.6 billion loss a year ago. "The health of the thrift industry is improving but we cannot say the industry is fully recovered from the financial crisis," Bowman said. "Until America gets back to full employment and more families are able to pay their monthly mortgage on time, the thrift industry will continue to face challenges." Loan production topped $88.1 billion in the first quarter of 2009 when the thrift industry had $1.2 trillion in assets and 801 FDIC-insured institutions. Today, the remaining 757 thrifts have $949.8 billion in total assets and 50 of those institutions are listed on the FDIC-problem bank list.