Mr. Cooper Group was profitable in 2023, a year marked by its acquisition of Home Point Capital and Roosevelt Management Co., along with the fallout from a cyberattack. Mr. Cooper’s strong performance was mainly due to its servicing business, which benefited from a higher interest rate environment.
During a call with analysts on Friday morning, company executives addressed some of the concerns raised by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who said this week that U.S. regulators are monitoring risks stemming from nonbank mortgage lenders, especially failures resulting from market strains.
Dallas-based Mr. Cooper is expected to reach $1.1 trillion of unpaid principal balance (UPB) in mortgage servicing rights (MSR) by the end of March, a target announced in July 2021 when the portfolio was at $650 billion.
“While the overall portfolio has grown considerably, and we expect it to grow by another 25% this year, only half of it is owned MSR. The other half is subservice for a number of clients,” vice chairman Chris Marshall told analysts. “If there are any limitations on concentration, I think it would be focused more on people, on owned MSR. So, I think we have quite a bit of room for us to grow before that becomes a concern for anybody.”
At the end of December, Mr. Cooper had $992 billion in MSR, up 14% year over year. Of that total, 59% was in owned MSR, 5% was in special servicing and 35% was in subservicing. According to Marshall, the company seeks a balance of 50% owned MSR and 50% subservicing.
“And if you look, in total, we’re still in kind of a single-digit market share,” Chairman and CEO Jay Bray said. “It’s a scale business. You have to build and invest in technology. So, we don’t have any concerns about continuing to grow the platform. The key for us is sustainability.”
Executives also added that, in terms of capital, the target for the company is “so much far ahead of what is required of banks” that “it’s not a concern,” according to Marshall. “I can’t even imagine it becoming anything of a conversation. (…) You should think of us as having a rock-solid balance sheet.”
Overall, Mr. Cooper delivered $500 million in net income in 2023. Its almost $1 trillion servicing portfolio generated $869 million in pretax operating income last year. And by funding $12.6 billion in loans, it had a $100 million pretax operating income.
“A key theme for 2023 was operating leverage. We grew the portfolio at a double-digit pace during the year while at the same time cutting costs companywide,” Bray said. “In fact, since 2018, we’ve cut servicing costs by 30%.”
Bray said the company will return its focus to equity, which is expected to grow to 14% to 18% by the end of 2025, compared to its current level of 12.5%.
Cyberattack, changes in leadership
Mr. Cooper generated $46 million in net income in the fourth quarter. That compares to $275 million in the third quarter of 2023 and $1 million in Q4 2022 when it had a negative mark-to-market of $58 million.
The earnings in Q4 2023 included, among other things, mark-to-market net hedges of $41 million and $27 million related to a cyberattack it suffered in October. The company had the data of nearly 15 million current and former clients exposed in a hacking incident, which resulted in at least four class-action suits.
Despite the cyber incident, the company kept its servicing and origination businesses profitable. With 4.6 million customers, the servicing division brought in $229 million in pretax operating income in Q4, compared to $301 million in Q3.
Meanwhile, the originations division — which focuses on acquiring loans from correspondent originators and refinancing existing loans in the direct-to-consumer channel — brought in $10 million in pretax operating income in Q4, compared to $29 million in the previous quarter.
“Bear in mind that these numbers were impacted by the cyber event,” Marshall said. “Excluding that impact, we estimate EBT [earnings before taxes] would have doubled. For similar reasons, refi recaptures dipped slightly during the quarter but are now back up over 80%.”
The company’s total funded volume declined to $2.7 billion in Q4, down from $3.4 billion in the previous three-month period. Cash-out refinances represented 61% of the total, followed by purchase loans (25%), second-lien refinances (12%) and rate-and-term refinances (2%).
In January, the company announced Mike Weinbach, a former Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase executive, as its new president. He is succeeding Marshall, who was named executive chairman at servicing fintech Sagent.
Mr. Cooper’s liquidity reached $2.4 billion in Q4, with $571 million in unrestricted cash.
Source: housingwire.com
Mortgage giant Mr. Cooper has tapped Mike Weinbach, a veteran banking executive, as president following current leader Chris Marshall’s expected retirement at the end of this year.
Weinbach, the longtime CEO of Chase Home Lending and former CEO of consumer lending at Wells Fargo, will begin his role Feb. 1, Mr. Cooper announced Tuesday. Marshall, also the company’s vice chairman, will remain onboard to assist with the transition and lead fundraising for Mr. Cooper’s mortgage servicing rights fund.
“I have long admired Mr. Cooper’s impressive record of growth and profitability as well as their commitment to the customer experience, and I am thrilled to hit the ground running with this fantastic team,” said Weinbach in a press release.
Company chairman and CEO Jay Bray in a statement commended Weinbach’s background in consumer lending. Weinbach worked at JPMorgan Chase from 2003 through 2020, heading mortgage operations in his final five years there. He worked in the newly-created consumer lending role at Wells from 2020 to 2022, overseeing the launch of a new portfolio of credit cards.
The incoming president will oversee Mr. Cooper’s originations, servicing and technology efforts. Weinbach steps in at a critical time for the publicly traded giant, following a massive data breach in November exposing the Social Security numbers of over 14 million customers. The incident has spawned over a dozen class action lawsuits from consumers, while Moody’s in November suggested the incident could impact the firm’s creditworthiness.
The company reported strong earnings in the third quarter, posting net income of $275 million, nearly double the amount of its second quarter results. Bray, at the time of the earnings and Marshall’s retirement announcement in October, credited Marshall for implementing “bank-like” efficiencies to the company during the pandemic.
Kurt Johnson, Mr. Cooper’s executive vice president and chief financial officer, then anticipated gains in owned servicing moving forward. As part of the firm’s busy 2023, it closed in August on the acquisition of the servicing business of Home Point Capital. That transaction added $83 billion in MSRs to bring Mr. Cooper’s servicing portfolio closer to $1 trillion.
Source: nationalmortgagenews.com
Mr. Cooper services 4.3 million customers and manages an unpaid principal balance totaling $870 billion. It ranks as one of the top 20 mortgage originators in the US, funding $28 billion in loans in 2022. Company representatives have declined to comment on the lawsuit. However, Mr. Cooper’s chairman and CEO, Jay Bray, issued an apology … [Read more…]
The earnings included, among other things, a $67 million gain from the collapse of a securitization trust and a $96 million preliminary bargain purchase gain related to the Home Point Capital acquisition. The firm also had a $39 million loss associated with equity investments primarily related to the sale of its title business in 2021.
Mr. Cooper’s chairman and CEO, Jay Bray, said the company’s earnings reflect the strength of its balanced business model, which propelled the company to be the “nation’s leading servicer” and “one step closer to achieving our $1 trillion target” in unpaid principal balance (UPB).
“Given the attractive yields available in the market, as well as new subservicing agreements in place, we will exceed our $1 trillion strategic target in the first quarter of next year,” Bray told analysts.
Mr. Cooper had 4.3 million customers and $937 billion in UPB at the end of September, compared to $882 billion at the end of June. Executives said the company has over $100 billion in deals scheduled to close and onboard in the first quarter of 2024, as well as $80 billion in subservicing related to a contract signed recently.
The company’s servicing portfolio ended the third quarter with a pretax operating income of $301 million, compared to $182 million in the previous quarter and $81 million in the same period of 2022.
Kurt Johnson, CFO at Mr. Cooper, told analysts that the company’s 2% delinquency rate at the end of the quarter was “the lowest we’ve ever seen in our portfolio.” He expects the delinquency rate to “tick up slightly,” but it “won’t be a material adverse environment for us in 2024.”
Through its origination business — which focuses on acquiring loans from correspondent originators and refinancing existing loans in the direct-to-consumer channel — Mr. Cooper delivered $29 million in pretax operating income in Q3 2023, compared to $38 million in the previous quarter and $45 million in the same period of 2022.
Chris Marshall, vice chairman and president who informed the company of his plans to retire at the end of 2024, said that Mr. Cooper had solid earnings in originations despite headwinds from rising rates, with refinance recapture reaching 83%, nearly four times the industry average.
However, Marshall said the fourth quarter is the weakest of the year, with distractions of the holidays and rates well above 7%. That’s when customers are more likely to take advantage of second-lien products, which have smaller margins.
“Also, we are seeing pricing pressure returning to the correspondent channel due to higher mortgage rates and pressuring origination volumes. So, as such, we got a range of $10 million to $20 million for the fourth quarter [for earnings in origination],” Marshall said.
Mr. Cooper’s funded volume declined to $3.3 billion in the third quarter of 2023 from $3.8 billion in the previous quarter and $5.7 billion in the third quarter of last year. The correspondent channel fell to $1.7 billion in Q3 2023 from $2.2 billion in Q2 2023. Meanwhile, direct-to-consumer rose to $1.7 billion, compared to $1.6 billion in the previous quarter.
A team of equity analysts at Jefferies said the third-quarter earnings show the core fundamentals at Mr. Cooper are “solid and improving.”
“The performance continued to demonstrate the earnings potential of the servicing segment in a higher-rate environment; the portfolio continues to show the benefits of operating leverage,” the Jefferies analysts wrote in a report. “Despite a challenging originations environment, COOP has achieved profitability through its direct-to-consumer platform throughout [2023].”
Looking ahead, analysts said bank capital requirements may provide the company “with a meaningful supply of bulk MSR deals to bid on in the medium/long term.”
To support its acquisition mode, Mr. Cooper said it has strong liquidity. The company had $2.7 billion in liquidity at the end of September, including $553 million in unrestricted cash.
Mr. Cooper’s share was trading at $56.76 on Wednesday around noon, up 5.81% from the previous closing.
Source: housingwire.com
The recently completed $300 million-plus acquisition of Home Point Capital by Mr. Cooper provided an attractive opportunity to bolster the company’s existing mortgage servicing rights (MSR) portfolio, and it’s expected to boost the company’s bottom line within the next couple of quarters.
This is according to Jay Bray, CEO of Mr. Cooper, in an interview on HousingWire’s Housing News podcast hosted by HW Media CEO Clayton Collins.
“We’ve known the management team [at HomePoint] well, [and] we’ve talked to them over the years about different strategic options,” Bray said. “As we entered the year, we felt like there was going to be an opportunity to buy some MSRs, and HomePoint presented a wonderful opportunity.”
Part of that stems from its large portfolio predominantly composed of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac-backed loans, and aligned with Mr. Cooper’s own strengths, Bray explained.
“We just felt like that made a ton of sense,” he said. “We can add [them] to our platform without a lot of incremental costs, and continue to grow the platform that we’ve discussed over the years. And so, it just made a lot of sense for us.”
Bray said incorporating the company and its $84 billion in MSR assets has proven to be a smooth process so far, adding that it made a lot of sense for Mr. Cooper to explore strategically.
When asked about the differences in complexity between acquiring a company and an MSR portfolio, Bray explained that this particular acquisition was not very complex since Home Point Capital had spent much of the last year “simplifying their operation,” he said. That actually created more commonality with an asset purchase, he explained.
“Once we got to the stage where we were able to execute on a transaction, really, all that was left was predominantly the servicing asset,” Bray said. “And the servicing asset was being subserviced, so they just didn’t have a ton of operations [or] people that were supporting that asset. So, it was almost like buying an MSR asset.”
Prior transactions Mr. Cooper has been involved in were comparatively more complicated since they involved bringing over people and associated platforms in addition to the companies themselves, Bray said.
“We’ve done more, I would say, asset transactions than really true company or platform transactions in the past,” he said. “We can certainly do either, but the complexity of HomePoint was pretty simple because they had really simplified their operation. So, that’s really the way to think about it.”
When asked about any added complexity existing subservicing relationships may add to an acquisition, Bray explained that Mr. Cooper typically pulls any related subservicing into its own platform.
“We view our platform as, if not the most efficient, one of the most efficient platforms out there,” Bray said. “And so with our scale, size [and] profitability, it always makes sense to move it onto our platform. Now, there may be a period of time that we keep it at the subservicer just from a logistics [or] approval standpoint, but we generally always move it to our platform.”
There were no real surprises to be found in the transaction process that were not previously identified by prior due diligence conducted by Mr. Cooper, Bray added.
Listen to the full discussion with Jay Bray on the recent episode of Housing News.
Source: housingwire.com
Dallas, Texas-based Mr. Cooper Group on Tuesday announced it has completed the acquisitions of Home Point Capital and Roosevelt Management Company. With the deals, Mr. Cooper has moved closer to its $1 trillion mortgage servicing rights (MSR) portfolio target.
Mr. Cooper concluded on Monday a tender offer for Home Point’s outstanding shares after extending the deadline twice. According to Equiniti Trust Company, the depository and paying agent for the tender offer, 136,532,192 shares of Home Point were tendered and not validly withdrawn (98.5% of the total). Mr. Cooper paid $2.333 per share.
“This acquisition adds scale to our platform, bringing us closer to our $1 trillion strategic target while enhancing returns due to attractive yields and positive operating leverage,” Jay Bray, Mr. Cooper’s chairman and CEO, said in a statement.
The deal – which will result in Homepoint becoming a wholly subsidiary of Mr. Cooper – was first announced in May and was expected to close in the third quarter of 2023. Mr. Cooper is paying $324 million in cash and assuming $500 million in outstanding Home Point 5% senior notes due in February 2026.
“The transaction includes the assumption of $500 million in bonds with an attractive rate, and as a result, we do not expect the acquisition to have a material impact on the company’s liquidity, which remains at robust and near-record levels,” Chris Marshall, Mr. Cooper’s vice chairman and president, said in a statement.
Also on Tuesday Mr. Cooper announced it completed the acquisition of Roosevelt and its affiliated subsidiaries, which include a registered investment advisor and licensed mortgage servicing rights (MSR) owner. The expectation was that the deal would close in the second half of 2023. The deal was announced in February.
The private New York-based company, founded in 2008, manages third-party capital on behalf of insurance companies, pension funds, hedge funds and other investors.
“We continue to see significant volumes of MSRs trading in the marketplace with attractive yields. Our asset management strategy is designed to make these yields available to institutional investors while continuing to grow our customer base and operational scale,” Marshall said.
Mr. Cooper ended June with $882 billion in unpaid principal balance (UPB), compared to $853 billion at the end of March, according to its second-quarter 2023 earnings released last week.
The servicing portfolio grew because of Rushmore’s special servicing platform acquisition. But other deals may bring the servicing portfolio to $957 billion, including $83 billion from the acquisition of Home Point Capital and $25 billion in pending bulk acquisitions.
Source: housingwire.com
Mr. Cooper’s chairman and CEO, Jay Bray, said the company delivered “strong margins in both servicing and operations, while Xome generated higher sales this quarter.”
Bray said Mr. Cooper is working on three strategic initiatives: drive further reductions in costs, which will help to generate greater operating leverage and deploy capital to portfolio growth; improve the direct-to-consumer platform contribution to the overall profitability, exploring new products; and grow the subservicing business, which provides incremental income, including gain on sale from recapture without tying up capital or liquidity.
The company’s servicing portfolio ended the second quarter with a pretax operating income of $182 million, compared to $157 million in the previous quarter. Based on these results, executives said Mr. Cooper raised its full-year guidance for operating income by 17%, from $600 million to $700 million.
Mr. Cooper had 4.3 million customers and $882 billion in unpaid principal balance (UPB) at the end of June, compared to $853 billion at the end of March. The servicing portfolio grew because of Rushmore’s special servicing platform acquisition, which brought about 300 employees to Mr. Cooper.
Other deals may bring the servicing portfolio to $957 billion, including $83 billion from the acquisition of Home Point Capital and $25 billion in pending bulk acquisitions, executives said.
The Home Point deal is expected to close in the third quarter, with loans onboarding in late 2023 or early 2024, executives told analysts. On Monday, Heisman Merger Sub, Mr. Cooper’s subsidiary, extended the expiration date of its offer to acquire all of Home Point’s outstanding shares of common stock for $2.33 per share.
“We continue to see a buyers market for MSRs, with plenty of attractive pools trading at unlevered pretax yields in the low double digits for conventional loans, and even higher for Ginnie Mae, which is exactly what we guided you to expect when we shared our proprietary forecasts late last year,” Chris Marshall, vice chairman and president, told analysts.
According to Marshall, “We’re now seeing a sharp increase in regional banks bringing MSR pools to market,” and one of the reasons is the expected new capital requirements for these financial institutions.
Regarding its subservicing business, Mr. Cooper is in the process of launching an MSR Fund. “We’re expecting our acquisition of the platform company to close in the third quarter subject to regulatory approval, positioning us to begin a fundraising campaign in the fourth quarter,” Marshall said.
Mr. Cooper’s origination business, which focuses on acquiring loans through the correspondent channel and refinancing existing loans through the direct-to-consumer channel, delivered $38 million in pretax operating income, compared to a $23 million net income in the previous quarter.
“During the quarter, we saw continued outstanding execution by our DTC platform and somewhat more rational competition in the corresponding channel,” Marshall said. “However, with mortgage rates hovering at 7%, we’re going to keep our guidance unchanged at $20 to $30 million [net income] per quarter.”
Mr. Cooper’s funded volume increased to $3.8 billion in the second quarter of 2023 from $2.7 billion in the previous quarter.
Direct-to-consumer originations reached $1.6 billion, compared to $1.4 billion in the previous quarter. Meanwhile, according to executives, the correspondent channel was responsible for $2.2 billion in Q2 2023, compared to $1.3 billion in Q1 2023, due to more rational pricing.
Mr. Cooper had strong second-quarter earnings, said a team of equity analysts at Jeffries.
“While volumes in the originations segment improved, ancillary revenues in servicing primarily drove the beat,” the Jefferies analysts wrote in a report. “As COOP is now occupied with closing the HMPT acquisition, we anticipate the company taking a step back from the bulk market in the N/T.”
At BTIG, analysts said it was a “good quarter,” reflecting the benefit of slow prepayment speeds and significant operating leverage.
“We think earnings visibility has strengthened as the company has further scaled its servicing portfolio, and the expense load appears relatively well-calibrated for the current interest rate environment. We also see enough liquidity to support additional bulk MSR purchases, as banks, in all likelihood, will be net sellers of servicing over the foreseeable future.”
To support its acquisition mode, Mr. Cooper said it has strong liquidity. The company had $2.2 billion in liquidity at the end of June, including $517 million in unrestricted cash.
Mr. Cooper’s share was trading at $57.17 on Wednesday around noon, up 5.73% from the previous closing. The firm’s board of directors has authorized stock repurchases of $200 million.
Source: housingwire.com
Mr. Cooper Group‘s profits strongly increased in the first quarter of 2023, as forecasted by its executives. The servicing portfolio again propelled the quarterly performance, but this time, the origination segment also contributed to the results by returning to profitability.
The company reported on Wednesday that it delivered $37 million in net income from January to March, compared to $1 million in the fourth quarter. The result included a mark-to-market of $63 million, a $1 million severance charge and $10 million losses with equity investments.
Mr. Cooper’s chairman and CEO Jay Bray said the operating results are due to a “balanced business model” between servicing and origination, according to a news release. He added executives are “positioning the company to navigate a volatile environment.”
The company’s servicing portfolio ended the quarter with a pretax operating income of $157 million, compared to $159 million in the previous quarter.
Mr. Cooper had 4.1 million customers and $853 billion in unpaid principal balance (UPB) at the end of March, compared to $870 billion at the end of December. The reduction resulted from a client that decided to take the portfolio in-house, executives said during a call with analysts.
But the servicing portfolio is expected to grow. Mr. Cooper announced it agreed to acquire Rushmore Loan Management Services‘s special servicing platform, which has $37 billion in sub-servicing contracts. The platform has 244,500 loans and will be combined with RightPath, bringing several hundred employees to Mr. Cooper.
Regarding its origination business, which focuses on acquiring loans through the correspondent channel and refinancing existing loans through the direct-to-consumer channel, Mr. Cooper had a $23 million pretax operating income, compared to a $2 million loss in the previous quarter.
Mr. Cooper’s funded volume declined to $2.7 billion in the first quarter of 2023 from $3.2 billion in the previous quarter. Direct-to-consumer comprised $1.4 billion and correspondent was responsible for $1.3 billion.
“Servicing continued to produce consistent stable predictable results, while originations outperformed on strong DTC execution,” Chris Marshall, vice chairman and president, said in a statement. “We continue to see exciting opportunities to grow our customer base, while our focus on positive operating leverage will help us generate higher returns.”
According to a team of equity analysts at Jefferies, the first quarter earnings “showed stability of servicing performance in a higher-rate environment.” Meanwhile, performance in the originations segment “was a welcome surprise to the upside after several quarters of tightening gain-on-sale margins and declining volumes.”
Bray told analysts that Mr. Cooper expects to increase its servicing portfolio. Despite the reduction in the unpaid principal balance in the first quarter of 2023, Mr. Cooper won deals that will include $57 billion in MSRs in the next few months, the executive said.
“You’re familiar with our strategic target of growing the portfolio to $1 trillion, but I’d share with you that we think of that as an absolute minimum for where we can go,” Bray said.
The recent banking crisis adds some opportunities to acquire MSRs, but the market is still in a “state of transition as everybody digests what has happened in the last month or two,” according to Bray. “But we expect more to come from the banks. And we expect to be active there.”
Regarding the appetite of bidders in the MSR market, executives said it’s smaller for Ginnie Mae’s portfolio than for the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs), Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Overall, “there’s not a significant number of bidders, but it’s competitive,” Bray said. Marshall added, “As the pools get larger, certainly as they get above $10 or $20 billion, there’s a handful of potential buyers.”
To support its acquisition mode, Mr. Cooper said it has strong liquidity. The company had $2.4 billion in liquidity at the end of April, including $534 million in unrestricted cash.
“Since the year-end, we’ve upsized several of our MSR line facilities, increasing aggregate capacity by $1.5 billion,” Kurt Johnson, the company’s CFO, told analysts. “Given the turmoil in the financial markets, we’re very pleased that our banking partners continue to see us as a sound counterparty with strong capital, risk management, and controls and were eager to support our growth throughout the quarter.”
Looking forward, Mr. Cooper continues to provide a forecast of $600 million EBIT for 2023.
Source: housingwire.com
“During the past several months of discussions with Mr. Cooper’s outstanding leadership team, I have become increasingly impressed with the strength and breadth of their platform and believe this combination provides a unique opportunity to take our operations to the next level,” said Rushmore CEO Terry Smith. “Our combined entity will provide an unparalleled offering … [Read more…]
Coppell-based Mr. Cooper Group is buying a large player in the mortgage business, adding a quarter of a million new customers.
Mr. Cooper, formerly known as Nationstar Mortgage, has agreed to buy Rushmore Loan Management Services LLC’s residential mortgage servicing platform. The deal adds loans for 250,000 customers totaling $37 billion in unpaid balances. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Fort Worth firm sells to company managing 16,000 rental houses and apartments
This will grow Mr. Cooper’s existing servicing business of 4.1 million customers and $853 billion in unpaid loan balances as of March. The company is one of the largest loan servicers in the country.
Mr. Cooper previously agreed to acquire Roosevelt Management Company LLC, Rushmore’s New York-based parent company, for its mortgage investment business.
The company hopes to close on the subservicing platform by the end of May and the rest of the Roosevelt transaction by the end of June, depending on regulatory approvals.
“We are delighted to welcome Rushmore’s talented team to our family, and we are committed to providing a seamless experience for their important clients,” Jay Bray, chairman and CEO of Mr. Cooper Group, said in a statement. “Working together, we will bring to market one of the leading special servicers in the industry.”
The deal will add “several hundred people” to the company, Chris Marshall, vice chairman and president of Mr. Cooper, said in a first-quarter earnings call Wednesday.
Rushmore leased 78,000 square feet of office space in the Freeport Business Center in Irving in 2021, a move from a smaller location in Irving. The company also has offices in Irvine, Calif., Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Oklahoma City, Nashville and San Juan, Puerto Rico, according to its LinkedIn page.
Homebuilder D.R. Horton shakes off high interest rates with strong start to spring selling
Rushmore CEO Terry Smith said the company has had several months of discussions with leadership at Mr. Cooper and that he has become increasingly impressed with the strength and breadth of Mr. Cooper’s platform.
“Our combined entity will provide an unparalleled offering to a broader base of clients and customers,” Smith said in a statement.
Marshall said in the earnings call that the deal will position the company for revenue growth as the credit environment changes. He also said the company has been told another company’s servicing platform is coming to market, so the timing was right to bring on a well-recognized brand and combine it with its existing servicing business.
“We think there’s a real opportunity to win business,” Marshall said.
Growth in Dallas-Fort Worth home prices falls to decade low
Mr. Cooper’s net income dropped dramatically to $37 million last quarter from $658 million a year before as higher interest rates crushed demand for home loans.
Through the rapid rise in mortgage rates last year, mortgage originations dropped from $689 billion in the first quarter to $398 billion in the last, with the refinancing market hit the most, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. The group forecasts a rebound in the industry throughout 2023 but not quite a return to 2022′s figures.
Mergers and acquisitions in the mortgage industry surged in 2022 due to industry challenges and owner retirements, according to an October report from mortgage industry analyst Stratmor Group. Another example of this came earlier this year when Dallas-based Town Square Mortgage merged with Illinois-based American Portfolio Mortgage Corp.
Source: dallasnews.com