Origination

Last week we spoke about creating opportunities for business. But there is a whole other side to having lost a deal being good news: There are just some clients that you should not work with.

Mortgage application volume rebounded slightly, driven by an increase in refinance demand during the week between Christmas and New Year's Day, according to new figures released by the Mortgage Bankers Association.

House prices are likely to go down during the first half of 2011 and then rebound in the second half, according to many forecasters.

Quorum Federal Credit Union, Purchase, N.Y., has entered into a timeshare receivables purchase facility with Bluegreen Corp. of Boca Raton, Fla., allowing the CU to buy timeshare receivables on a non-recourse basis.

There was no shortage of short-sale transactions last year in South Florida.

The Conference of State Bank Supervisors has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's implementation team as a starting point in an effort to coordinate supervision between the two.

The often unintended, adverse consequence of the subprime product crisis is the lender’s tendency to use caution when introducing new and affordable loan programs that are not “plain vanilla.” Agreed, the era of “exotic” mortgages is gone. Yet, going forward, the hope is that instead of reducing mortgage choices, the industry will come up with well structured creative options.

Most of the nation is familiar with the major snowstorm that did something very rare—practically shut down New York City. So when I was not outside shoveling show, I had the opportunity to watch plenty of television, and I saw one particularly bad piece of advertising that mortgage marketers should never emulate.

Tower Bancorp Inc. of Harrisburg, Pa., is discontinuing the operations of a mortgage division that belonged to First Chester County Corp., a bank it bought last month.

The way Tom Wind of J.I. Kislak Mortgage sees it, dozens of mortgage banking firms will fold their tents this year as refinancings wane, but his young firm will more than quadruple its loan originations this year.