In the fourth quarter, subprime giant Household International sold $3.8 billion worth of B&C servicingrights. The secretive Household, which is in the process of being sold to foreign bank HSBC Holdings, wouldnot disclose the price it received for the servicing or the identity of the buyer...
New Century, which is not a secretive subprime lender, funded $1.47 billion in January, a 74% increasefrom the same month a year ago. The company pointed out that the first quarter is historically the slowest of theyear. Well, not this year...
It's no secret that GE Consumer Finance is buying the U.K. subprime (read: consumer lending) divisionof Abbey National Bank over in London. But what might be a secret is that five years back, GE's U.S. divisionlooked at buying several subprime firms on this side of the pond. Which B&C lenders did GE look at? TheMoney Store, Green Tree Financial and United Companies, to name a few. It's safe to say that GE dodgeda major bullet by not buying any of these subprime specialists. First Union paid more than $2 billionfor The Money Store and wound up liquidating most of the company. Conseco bought Green Tree for $7 billionand eventually went bust because of Green Tree. And United Companies? It went BK on its own. Aegis Mortgage,Houston, wound up buying some of UC's branches, dirt cheap...
At one point, not too long ago, short sellers were all over E-Loan, figuring the company would go downthe drain with the rest of the dot-coms, but in the fourth quarter the online mortgage lender was squarely in theblack again, earning $5 million...
Should Fed chairman Alan Greenspan resign? Most would think not, but that doesn't include Greenspan criticSen. Jim Bunning. During the Humphrey-Hawkins hearings, the Republican senator from Kentucky told the centralbanker point blank: "You have been in this position for a long time, some would say too long." Some Metsfans don't think too highly of Sen. Bunning. Back in the 1960s, when he was a major league pitcher, he no-hit theteam from Flushing...
MORTGAGE PEOPLE: Our deepest sympathies and condolences to the family of Robert L. Woodson Jr.,39, a former chief of staff at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. In early February he waskilled in an automobile accident in Silver Spring, Md. Industry veteran, David S. Loeb, a co-founder ofIndyMac Bancorp, Pasadena, Calif., has retired as chairman of the company due to health concerns. Yearsago, IndyMac was created as an offshoot of Countrywide. Back then, both were non-depositories. Today, both havedeposits as part of their businesses.
NO-AUTHOR AUTHOR: Sources at Freddie Mac have asked me not to give any more publicity to fledglingchildren's author, Douglas Robinson, a Freddie Mac spokesman. So I won't mention that Doug is reading fromhis new book this weekend in Washington, D.C.
AND FINALLY: What was the biggest story in mortgage banking this past week? RBC getting out ofthe net branch business? (See Monday's National Mortgage News.) A $2.7 trillion year in 2002? A coalitionforming to lobby for tax deductibility of mortgage insurance? FM Watch asking for a review of risk-basedcapital stands for the GSEs? No, no, no and no. How about an assistant mortgage broker being one of two finalistsin Fox's smash TV show "Joe Millionaire." I haven't watched the show, but on Monday night my wife draggedme into the living room to view the final five minutes. I refused until she said, "One of the finalists isa mortgage broker or something." I said, "A mortgage broker? That sounds like news." It turns outthe finalist, whose name I don't even remember, is actually an assistant to a mortgage broker. If she gets pickedby Joe Millionaire (not really a millionaire but pretending to play one on TV), she might wind up marrying a $19,000-a-yearconstruction worker. Of course, if she graduates to being an actual mortgage broker, she could earn (during thisrefi boom) $19,000 a month.
