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Royal Bancshares of Pennsylvania Inc. in Narbeth said Friday that Wayne Huey Jr. was elected to its board.
October 7 -
A private-equity backed North Carolina holding company is acquiring the remaining shares of VantageSouth Bank that it does not already own and merging the bank with its other subsidiary.
October 6 -
The biggest bank in Hawaii is set to have a new chief executive.
September 20
As much as mortgage lenders may be wishing for another drink from the refinance well, the recent dip in interest rates isn't likely to spur a refi boom, or even a boomlet, anytime soon.
However, the rate drop, driven by concerns over the European economy and the Ebola crisis, did prompt the Mortgage Bankers Association to
With that in mind, there's one segment of borrowers that are prime targets for refinance leads, said Jim Blatt, CEO of Mortgage Returns, a customer-relationship management technology vendor in St. Louis.
While there's a "nice opportunity" to refi borrowers currently in conventional mortgages, "the better opportunity for a refi is much more complicated. And that is finding opportunities to refi a Federal Housing Administration loan into a conventional loan with private mortgage insurance," Blatt said.
It might take some work, he noted, including getting the balance of the note, estimating what the FHA premium is and then calculating what the private MI premium will be. Plus, the borrower's credit score has to be taken into account.
The goal is the help lenders evaluate "what can they capitalize on from my database," Blatt said. Mortgage Returns is performing the calculations to help lenders identify their past clients that might benefit, and despite the extra effort, the opportunity can have an immediate impact and help originators while the shift to a purchase-driven market becomes more established.
Based on the company's own analysis of 500,000 FHA loans closed in the last five years, 48% of borrowers have an opportunity to save at least $78 a month even though the interest rate on the new loan was on average 12.5 basis points higher. The savings comes from the lower mortgage insurance premium.
"So you also have to educate the consumers that rate isn't everything. That traditional mortgage message of rates are at historic lows won't work for this," Blatt said. But there is the chance to lower the borrower's monthly payment and put them into a better financial position.
Another selling point is that private MI is automatically cancellable when the mortgage is paid down to a 78% loan-to-value ratio, whereas FHA insurance is for the life loan.
The biggest benefit is that the marketing approach shows the client that the loan officer is "a true mortgage professional," someone looking out for their best interests, he added.
Interest rates on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages dropped 29 basis points from mid-September to mid-October, and the refinance share of mortgage applications jumped from 56% to 65% during the same period, according to the MBA.
The sudden jolt in activity may be just enough of an excuse for lenders to procrastinate on preparing for the
"With interest rates where they are, I don't think anybody is looking to upset their apple cart. I think you are seeing people want to stay the course and are pushing off the inevitable to some inevitable point," Middleman said.
But the veteran mortgage executive was cautious when it came to predicting where interest rates are headed. "Don't make any bets on my projections on interest rates because I am never right. I am entering my 12th consecutive year of calling for higher interest rates and I have not been correct yet," he said.
The ability to project how rates will change is difficult because, "we have evolved into a world village," Middleman said, where events abroad have a much greater influence on domestic financial markets than they have in the past.
While he acknowledged his own unfamiliarity with the intricacies of the international affairs responsible for the current rate decline, Middleman said mortgage executives must make educating themselves on these issues a priority in order to stay on top of trends.
On Oct. 16, the 2.5% Ginnie Mae security was trading at par value for a brief period. If that was to have been sustained, "you would have seen a lot consumers come back into the money for refinance possibilities," he said.
Another way of saying that, he said, is if interest rates for the 30-year fixed fell below 3.5% for a prolonged period, it could spur large amounts of refis, especially if borrowers can avoid paying points and fees and get the new loan at no cost.
Middleman said he normally does not advise paying points, but if the borrower can get the mortgage to 3% by paying points, then do it.
"If you are making a 30-year decision and you're going to live in your house for a long time, that might be some place you want to go. But each person's individual decision making has to be taken into account," he said.
"There is no one size fits all when it comes to financing," Middleman continued. "The amount you invest in your mortgage has to be reflective of the time you expect to spend with that mortgage."
Industry observers, most notably, Freddie Mac, said
However, it takes more than a week of low rates to make a trend, said Ruth Lee, executive vice president at Denver-based Titan Lenders Corp. "But it does seem to indicate there is a new normal in the rate environment," she said. "A lot of people thought that the bottom was there, and to find a new bottom is a little surprising."
Titan's president and CEO, Mary Kladde, called the decline "an October event," noting that the same thing happened one year ago. "October seems to be the month of crashes," she added, referring to the Stock Market Crash of 1929.
Several industry experts, most notably Barry Habib, the CEO of consulting firm MBS Highway, subscribe to the theory that when stock prices decline, investors' money moves into bonds and as a result bond yields decline, which in turn drives down mortgage rates.
The recent rate drop was influenced by the stock market gyrations the week before the MBA Annual Convention, but to blame things like the death of the first Ebola patient in the U.S. for what happened to rates is "a little simplistic to be true," Lee said.
On the other hand, "It wouldn't hurt my feelings if there were people who were fence-sitters who decided to take this as the opportunity to move. But, is this production that wasn't going to happen eventually over the course of the next 12 months? I don't know," Lee said.
Still, it's production that's happening now, which lenders will benefit from, including, Lee hopes, Titan, which provides outsourced back office services as well as a jumbo correspondent mortgage aggregator.
Based on business at the Orange, Calif.-based appraisal management company LRES, CEO Roger Beane is another who doesn't think a refi boom is looming. "Our customers are not telling us to be prepared" for an increase in appraisals for refinancings, he said.
What happened in the bond market was a blip and would not make a sustainable refinance boom, added Rick Seehausen, the CEO of LenderLive Network, another outsource services provider based in Denver.
But the
Meanwhile,
Coester VMS, a Rockville, Md.-based AMC, does appraisal work for several of the larger home builders with affiliated mortgage companies. Overall, "their business has increased dramatically" this year to the point where they are "slammed," said CEO Brian Coester.
One builder is seeing a 30% year-over-year increase in units being built, he said, which is in turn leading to more work for Coester VMS.
Looking further into the future, Coester expects to see the mortgage industry increase its adoption of technology to ease the process in the next five years than it has the previous 25 years.
That's good for compliance, regulation and even for lenders' businesses, because it will lower the cost to the consumer for a mortgage, he said.
"The mortgage industry has always been kind of shy about technology. It is something that needs to happen.
Still, the mood regarding the overall origination market among many in the industry was perhaps best summed up by LRES's Beane: "Hello 2015; thank God 2014 is behind us," he said, calling the current year "a real grind."
