Eye on Warehousing
The good news for nonbank lenders that rely on warehouse lines to fund their mortgages: Citigroup Inc. is returning to the market.
The bad news: the fates of two of the warehouse market's remaining providers remain uncertain.
Citi said Tuesday in a
"By providing liquidity to third-party mortgage lenders, the initiative adds to the primary funding available for new homeowners to obtain mortgages or for current homeowners to refinance," the company said. (The government has invested $45 billion in Citi.)
Citi shut down its warehouse lending unit First Collateral Services last year. Wells Fargo & Co., GMAC Inc. and Flagstar Bancorp have also entered or expanded in warehousing this year.
All of this may be cold comfort to the warehousing clients of Colonial BancGroup Inc., which said July 31 that its survival was
At the end of March, Colonial was the nation's largest warehouse lender, with $4.1 billion in commitments, according to National Mortgage News.
The prospect of 70 or so nonbank lenders losing their funding prompted the Mortgage Bankers Association to meet with officials at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. last week, National Mortgage News reported on its Web site Tuesday. (The paper, like American Banker, is published by SourceMedia Inc.)
Another big warehouse lender, Guaranty Financial Group Inc., has said its failure is imminent. (See related
'Writing' Mortgages
Who needs to be a friend of Angelo Mozilo when you work in high-end media?
For Graydon Carter, the editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair, celebrity has brought unusual perks:
Carter's 2006 mortgage agreement with Advance Magazine Publishers Inc., the parent company of Conde Nast, requires him to make principal payments of $25,000 on Jan. 1 of each year that he remains at Vanity Fair, according to property
The no-interest feature lasts only as long as Carter remains at the magazine, and the agreement requires him to pay the remaining principal balance a year after he leaves. Assuming he keeps his job and the same mortgage agreement, "Carter would repay the loan in 212 years," Gawker calculated.
Until then, Carter is paying what amounts to $2,083.33 a month for a four-story townhouse in Manhattan. The New York Observer
The loans Mozilo arranged for VIPs as chairman and chief executive of Countrywide Financial Corp.
A spokeswoman for Vanity Fair would not discuss the Carter loan Wednesday.
Conde Nast, which in addition to Vanity Fair publishes Vogue and The New Yorker, holds mortgages on several of its employees' homes, the Observer
The publishing industry's troubles may spell the end of this side business. On July 20, citing "substantial revenue losses resulting from the deep and prolonged recession," Conde Nast said it had
Negative Exposure
Not all of Vanity Fair's star contributors have had such an easy time with their lenders.
On July 29, the photographer Annie Leibovitz was
Last week, Gawker
Quotable …
"A borrower said to me the other day that they want to buy the house across the street at half price. The only problem is, they'd have to sell their own home."