Origination

The economy is in the tank and thousands of people are out of work. In the U.S., given the slow recovery, the housing crisis continues.

The marketing world has lost another great as Barry Becher, one of the men behind the Ginsu knife commercials, passed away recently. Those famous (or depending on your point of view, infamous) television ads still contain a lesson for today's mortgage marketers.

Citigroup executives remain very guarded about the outlook for the housing market and they have no immediate plans to reduce their reserves for possible mortgage losses.

The benchmark 10-year Treasury’s yield matched its all-time low of 1.44%, putting more downward pressure on long-term mortgage rates.

Mary Armstrong, an unlicensed mortgage broker, Teresa Rose, a real estate agent, William Fountain, Armstrong’s assistant, and Justin Mensen were all charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and to launder money.

Lenders Compliance Group is using Veros Real Estate Solutions' collateral integrity analysis product for prefunding and post-closing audits, early payment defaults, high default due diligence, as well as warehouse bank and portfolio reviews.

While Fitch believes that housing trends may see some stabilization, further weakening could result in a reversal in mortgage reserve releases or provisioning.

During a conference call one analyst suggested that Wells Fargo could originate $170 billion of single-family loans in the third quarter based on its conversion rate of applications-to-closed loans.

Warehouse providers tracked by National Mortgage News increased their commitments from 5% to 200% in the first quarter except for B of A which has drastically cut back on that line of business, shifting it over to its Merrill Lynch affiliate.

Well, well, well (or maybe it should be Wells, Wells, Wells), it’s been quite a week for the little guy. Citigroup started it all off when National Mortgage News published a story about its ‘exclusionary list’ for correspondents. Then Wells Fargo came along and tossed its broker network into the ocean. Oh, and then Wells finished the week off by confirming that it’s killing most of its Realtor joint ventures (mortgage companies). We understand that the survivors include one in Virginia and at least one in Hawaii.