Thanks to crumbling mortgage rates loan applications are up by at least 30% at Skyline Financial, Agoura Hills, Calif., a nonbank lender headed by industry veteran Bill Dallas.
Dallas said the comparison is from July to August. “Who would've guessed that the debt ceiling crisis would've given us this?” said the Skyline CEO in an interview.
Most of the increase is from customers seeking to refinance. “I would say that between 65% and 75% are refi apps,” said Dallas. Prior to the summer, Skyline's main focus was purchase money loans.
A retail-only lender with a heavy market presence in California, Skyline is on track to originate $1 billion this year compared to $880 million in 2010.
“In California [where home prices are high] it doesn't take much of a rate drop to save money,” he said. (For the full story on the industry's application surge see the Monday paper edition of National Mortgage News.)
