Origination

CitiMortgage is throwing its wholesale division overboard – again. Readers of the National Mortgage News website (and weekly) might recall that two years ago Citi scaled back its broker channel significantly only to re-grow it a bit. But at last check, wholesale production accounted for just 10% of its overall production and some brokers I talked to are not sorry to see them go.

The mortgage division of Ally Financial Inc., originated $16.5 billion of new loans in the fourth quarter, a small gain from 3Q, but a 29% drop from the same period in 2011, according to new figures released Thursday morning.

The analysts at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods predict investors would be willing to take on more interest rate risk in light of the Federal Reserve Board's intention to keep rates low through 2014 and that should keep their interest in mortgage real estate investment trusts growing.

In the movie "Groundhog Day", Bill Murray is forced to live the same day over and over again until he begins to change his choices. Today, many loan officers might be feel as doomed as Murray even after writing their 2012 production goals. Nothing has really changed and today is the same as yesterday.

The Mortgage Bankers Association, in a new forecast, estimates that residential loan production will total $992 billion this year, a 20% decline from 2011. The biggest driver of the decline is weaker refinancings.

Among new Obama Administration moves to aid housing is a pilot program aimed at helping certain rural borrowers refinance to reduce their payments.

As might be expected, the American Bankers Association is none-too-thrilled with a new White House plan to tax banks to pay for a new government refinancing program.

It would appear that home prices just can't catch a break. According to preliminary sales figures collected by Lender Processing Services, house prices fell 0.8% in December following similar declines in November and October.

After significantly reducing its geographic footprint in November, Google “discontinued” its mortgage rate advertising platform Wednesday, just two years after the search engine entered the online rate search and lead generation market.

CitiMortgage, the nation's sixth largest residential wholesaler, Wednesday afternoon informed its loan brokers that it will cease table funding loans next week as it prepares to exit the channel.