A new report indicates that the average mortgage servicer saw its servicing portfolio sink 22 percent between June and September. The diminishing portfolios helped drive down the number of loans handled per servicing employee by more than a hundred. Net servicer earnings swung to a loss.
The average servicing portfolio at independent mortgage servicers consisted of 31,329 loans as of Sept. 30. The collective loan balance of the serviced loans was $4.7 billion.
The report, Quarterly Mortgage Bankers Performance Report Q3 2011, was issued by the Mortgage Bankers Association. The servicing-related data were derived from 162 mortgage servicers that reported through a WebMB form.
In the prior report, 40,122 mortgages were serviced for $6.2 billion by the average servicer. The total was 45,796 loans for $7.0 billion in the same period last year.
The Sept. 30 total reflected less than 9 percent in loans that were sub-serviced for others, down from more than 10 percent in the previous three-month period.
Servicers handled 869 loans per full-time employee, less productive than the 1,013-per-employee rate in the second quarter but better than 839 in the year-earlier period.
The average servicer had 90 full-time employees, fewer than 100 in the previous quarter.
Servicers earned $221 per loan in net servicing operating income, a little more than the $212 earned in the prior quarter, though the total net servicing financial income swung to a $28 loss from a $64 profit. The loss was less than the $50 loss per loan a year prior.
