The M&A market for "name" mortgage firms has been mostly dead of late (everyone's too busy makingloans to even ponder the thought of selling) but one investment banker said recently that "there's a ton ofsmall firms" out there available for purchase. This year, according to the Quarterly Data Report, theindustry will fund $2.5 trillion in loans, but next year looks like a $1.5 trillion to $1.8 trillion year, whichis still darn good. Many mortgage professionals think the good times will last for another year. If you're lookingto sell, it's always best to sell now, while volumes stay high...
ABN Amro Mortgage funded $15.56 billion in home mortgages in October, a 22% increase from September.Its InterFirst wholesale unit funded $13 billion...
Has the housing "leak" (as opposed to a bubble) began? In Dallas County, in September, the medianhome price sank by 2.4% to $141,100, the first year-over-year decline in 69 months. According to press reports,new homes being built west of Houston are sitting on the market for as long as six months. Keep in mind that mortgagerates are at four-decade lows. Could this be the beginning of the end for the housing boom? Maybe for Texas, buthomes continue to sell briskly in such red hot markets as Long Island, Northern New Jersey and the Washington,D.C. area...
On Thursday, General Electric, the parent of GE Mortgage Insurance, cut its earnings outlook andannounced a $1.4 billion charge at its money-losing reinsurance unit, but the news was better than investors anticipatedand the firm's stock shot up more than 8%. (The reinsurance unit has nothing to do with the MI unit which is asolid performer for GE)...
Subprime lender New Century (Nasdaq: NCEN) has seen its stock recover nicely over the past week. NCEN'sshare price is now north of $20 a share. It recently completed a one million share buy-back...
One of the greatest accomplishments of Frank Raines' career may very well be his tenure as OMBdirector when he helped balance the federal budget (since unbalanced by the current administration and Congress).But another feather in the cap of the Fannie Mae chairman would be (besides, of course, his years at FannieMae) bringing major league baseball back to the nation's capital. Mr. Raines is part of a group called WashingtonBaseball Club LLC, which recently released a report on five possible sites in D.C. for a baseball stadium.Also part of WBC is commercial real estate executive Joseph E. Robert Jr. who is well known in mortgagecircles for his timely purchases of troubled real estate from the now-defunct Resolution Trust Corp. (sincemerged into the FDIC)...
On Nov. 7 Citigroup officially completed its purchase of Golden State Bancorp, the parent of FirstNationwide Mortgage, Frederick, Md...
C-BASS recently completed a $203 million REMIC deal. Banc of America Securities LLC was the lead,J.P. Morgan the co-manager...
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, is stepping down from the Senate on Nov. 30,after the close of business. The former Senate Banking Committee chairman, who is retiring from public service,will become vice chairman of UBS Warburg.
MORTGAGE PEOPLE: Provident Bank Mortgage, Riverside, Calif., has named Debbie Baker vicepresident in charge of its wholesale lending division. Bank of America has named Rudy Medina consumerreal estate business strategy executive, or CREBSE. He will remain as president of HomeFocus, a unit withinCRE that manages title and closing services until BoA finds a replacement.
AND FINALLY: Fidelity National, the title insurance/services giant, is upping its investment inLendingTree. FNF soon will own a total of 3.6 million shares of LendingTree's common, or 12.4% of the votingshares.
