Those in attendance at the legislative conference of the NAMB this past week heard a clear message asto which party has its interests at heart: the Republicans. When the name of Sen. Paul Sarbanes, D-Md.,(ranking Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee) was mentioned during one panel, hisses were heard in the audience.National Association of Mortgage Brokers favors current Senate Banking chairman Richard Shelby of Alabamawho has gone to bat for brokers on RESPA reforms. But NAMB isn't stupid. One speaker at the conference gave a clearmessage to the Republican party: if RESPA reforms don't go NAMB's way, there's 35,000 Florida brokers who won'tbe voting for Mel Martinez (current HUD secretary) should he leave the housing agency and run for the Senatein Florida...
Frank Raines of Fannie Mae keeps getting richer. How do we know? Thanks to very viewer friendlyS-3 statements on Fannie's website (as well as at the SEC), mortgage professionals can see not only the stock andoption holdings of Fannie officials, but they can see if their options are "in the money." As Fannie'sstock crept up last week, Mr. Raines options (358,830 that are "in the money") went up in value. It wouldbe nice if all publicly-traded firms (General Electric, Wells Fargo and so on) would present such viewer-friendlydocuments on their websites...
Short positions in LendingTree rose almost 3% from mid-February to mid-March. Short sellers are gamblingthat when (or if) the refinancing boom ends, LendingTree will see a major decline in revenue. Then again, predictingwhen the refi boom will end is difficult at best...
Short sellers are already targeting subprime lender Accredited Home Loans, which recently went public.At mid-March, 346,505 shares in the company had been sold short...
Countrywide's share price cracked $60 a share on Wednesday and almost reached $61 before falling backdown...
On Wednesday, subprime lender Ameriquest Mortgage came to market with a $900 million asset-backed deal...
According to National Mortgage News affiliate, the Quarterly Data Report, the average loansize in the U.S. is now above $200,000...
WASHINGTON NEWS: In its annual report, the FHLB-San Francisco thinks the day is coming when all12 FHLBs will become one. If so, that means the system will need just one president instead of 12. In other words,a new FHLB-GSE could fire 10 or 11 presidents, and save a ton of money in salary and benefits. How much money?Quite a bit. The highest paid FHLB president is Chuck Thiemann who recently retired from the Cincinnatibank. He was making almost $1 million a year. No.2 would be Alex Pollock of Chicago who earned $832,500last year. Who would head a mega-FHLB? Mr. Pollock isn't popular among his brethren, so he'd likely be out on thestreet. If I were a betting man I'd say Dean Schultz of San Francisco. Why? The FHLB-SF has a huge powerbase in terms of financial assets. Who would be No. 2? Al DelliBovi, president of the New York FHLB...
According to the International Monetary Fund, housing booms are more likely than stock booms to end ina bust. IMF also believes that when housing prices do in fact burst, it causes more damage than stock market busts...
MORTGAGE PEOPLE: Countrywide Financial has hired Christine Frye as its chief privacy officer.Frye will be responsible for guiding Countrywide's consumer privacy policies and information practices. She joinsCountrywide from Experian...
KEY MORTGAGE CONFERENCE: The Mortgage Bankers Association is holding its national secondary marketconference in New York, starting on Sunday and running through Wednesday...
