Mortgages

Who says retail lending is more expensive than wholesale production? Well, actually, JPMorgan Chase does. In its new earnings statement JPM notes that it spent an additional $82 million in 4Q (compared to 3Q) due to higher residential production costs: increased retail expenses and "enhanced" loan underwriting. JPM has been out of wholesale for two years now.

It's exhausting reading all those articles about marketing, product development, public relations, motivation and every business discipline one can imagine. Every so often there's an article that discusses sales or something relative to selling. All of these authors and motivators have their priorities backward.

Due to more stringent government loan requirements and increased oversight by regulators, small servicers have experienced problems with traditional subservicers. These problems include high delinquency ratios under Ginnie Mae, high FHA curtailments, low loss mitigation workout ratios and challenges with conveying properties to FHA.

After the federal government recently announced that it plans on launching a pilot program in the first quarter this year to sell Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Federal Housing Administration REO homes in bulk to investors, two California companies have decided not to wait to develop their own rental platform.

Low-ball appraisals are having a dramatic impact on housing sales. But they are hitting veterans who want to use GI home loans particularly hard, according to a survey of 188 home building executives by John Burns Real Estate Consulting.

Although insurance conglomerate MetLife failed to unload its residential mortgage banking business, it is moving forward with a plan to sell its profitable warehouse lending division, according to industry officials briefed on the matter.

When Bank of America and Wells Fargo exited the reverse lending space last year there were concerns that liquidity might dry up, but don't tell that to the sector's "survivors" who are now feasting on all the market share the two banking giants ceded.

JPMorgan Chase suffered a residential repurchase loss of $390 million in the fourth quarter, a 17% increase from the year earlier period, and a sign that Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and other secondary market investors are not easing up on their buyback demands.

Insiders who see a housing market rebound ahead are not equally optimistic about delinquencies and foreclosure rates in a market that at best will be flat.

What thoughts should guide ongoing Congressional consideration on housing finance? Let's start with this one: "It is increasingly clear that the Fed and the U.S. government's entwinement with the housing market is one of the greatest economic distortions on earth" (as the Lex Column of the Financial Times wrote).

A slim majority of Americans want the federal government to do more to help homeowners with troubled mortgages, according to a recent survey conducted by Yahoo Real Estate.

One of the joys of living in South Florida is spending New Year's Day at the beach. This year when walking along the shore I came across a sand crab making its way toward the water. My grandchildren were fascinated by the fact that the crab didn't walk forward, but sideways. Every time my grandchildren got close, the crab stuck its head into its shell, thereby making no progress at all.

Examiners from the Consumer Financial Production Bureau will begin entering nonbank residential lending shops in February and March, according to the bureau's newly appointed "permanent" director, Richard Cordray.

Redwood Trust is readying a $415 million jumbo MBS deal backed predominately by loans sold to the REIT by First Republic Bank and PHH Mortgage, according to a presale report on the deal prepared by Fitch Ratings.

Citigroup Inc. appears to have abandoned its plan to sell its consumer lending unit -- which also makes real estate loans -- until the economy improves and it can fetch a better price for it, according to Fitch Ratings Inc.

Tree.com has obtained a $100 million warehouse line of credit from Credit Suisse First Boston Mortgage Capital LLC, the second $100 million line the company has obtained in the past 90 days, said its chairman and chief executive Doug Lebda.

The nation's top five ranked residential funders, as a group, are continuing to lose production market share, but most of that loss can be attributed to one firm: Bank of America, which is deemphasizing mortgages.

Sabal Financial Group, a financial services management firm, has acquired a $204 million portfolio of performing and nonperforming loans from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Average weekly mortgage rates continued their "How low can they go?" trend in Freddie Mac's primary market survey, declining slightly to another round of record lows.

So you've written this really cool article. You want to world to know about it. But just the thought of "getting it out there" is overwhelming.