Increased home-equity originations more than offset a quarter-over-quarter drop in first mortgage lending at Bank of America Corp. The company continued to scale back on assets, servicing and staffing.
Fourth-quarter residential loan production reported Thursday in the Charlotte, N.C.-based firm’s financial results
was approximately 41,000 loans for $15.036 billion.
Business inched up from
the more than 43,500 loans closed for $14.950 billion during the three months ended Sept. 30. Third-quarter volume was originally reported at $14.949 billion.
Originations also improved from nearly 50,000 units for $13.539 billion in the three months ended Dec. 31, 2013.
Full-year 2014 home lending amounted to around 163,500 loans for $54.523 billion, tumbling from the prior year’s $89.782 billion.
Fourth-quarter 2014 production included
$11.616 billion in first mortgages, off from $11.725 billion the prior period. But home-equity loan production rose to $3.420 billion from the third quarter’s $3.225 billion.
BofA finished 2014 with a mortgage servicing portfolio of $693 billion. The portfolio was cut from $722 billion three months earlier and $810 billion a year earlier.
The serviced-for-investors portion of the year-end 2014 servicing portfolio was $474 billion.
BofA owned
$301.922 billion in residential assets, reducing its home loan investments from $312.236 billion three months earlier and $341.738 billion a year earlier.
The most recent total reflected $216.197 billion in mortgages and $85.725 billion in HELs.
Also on BofA’s balance sheet were $47.682 billion in commercial real estate loans, more than the $47.023 billion owned as of Sept. 30 and $47.893 billion owned at the same point in 2013.
BofA received $1.559 billion in new repurchase claims, though that was less than the $2.377 billion in claims received in the third quarter. That left $22.422 billion in claims outstanding. Almost all of the outstanding claims were from private-label mortgage-backed securities.
Within just the consumer real estate services segment, there was an $0.640 billion loss prior to income taxes– a huge improvement over the $6.465 billion loss experienced in the third quarter and also better than the $1.566 billion loss in the final quarter of 2013.
Income before taxes at the big bank as a whole leapt to $4.3 billion from $0.4 billion in the third quarter and was also better than $3.8 billion in the fourth-quarter 2013.
As of the end of the fourth-quarter 2014, the legacy asset division had 17,100 employees. Staffing within the segment was reduced from 18,500 as of the end of the previous period and slashed from 28,800 at the end of 2013.
Headcount across all businesses was 223,715. Staffing was cut from 229,538 three months earlier and 242,117 twelve months earlier.
BofA finished last year with 4,855 banking centers,
92 fewer than at the end of the third quarter.
