Explaining the Mortgage Industry’s ‘Temporary Insanity’

I was talking to one mortgage industry veteran the other day about the M&A market. He said plenty of investors have been eyeing the business, but time and time again he has to explain how the industry lost its collective mind from 2003 to 2006. “I tell them it was our temporary insanity stage,” this executive said. Of course, today’s mortgage market looks wonderful: profit margins are at record highs, even though production volumes have yet to recover from the peak years. But that’s okay -- it can be argued that those peaks were artificially created by crazy loose underwriting standards. But will more private equity money enter the business the next two years? PE firms are probably looking at the killing that Wilbur Ross made on selling Homeward Residential to Ocwen. Ross won’t say what he’s netting on the sale, but we all know that he certainly paid a lot less than $750 million, which is the total value of the deal.