Remember When Wells and B of A Laid Off All Those Processors?

In the early spring Wells Fargo & Co., and Bank of America – which rank first and second, respectively, in terms of residential lending -- shed thousands of back office loan processors and support staff. Wells alone cut its mortgage retail fulfillment staff by 4,500 full-time equivalents or FTEs. (From what we heard loan officers were mostly spared but not totally.) Anyway, an application boom is at hand (thanks to a 2.1% yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury) and it's possible that small to medium sized lenders (nonbanks and community lenders alike) will pick up market share because they didn't gut their back office operations like the big boys. We will know in a few months when the 3Q residential production tallies are released by National Mortgage News and the Quarterly Data Report…