Independent mortgage bankers saw quarterly lending dip but managed to boost the bottom line. Secondary marketing income rose.
During the first quarter of this year, an average of 2.0 residential loans were closed every month per mortgage production employee.
Lending productivity
dropped from the previous three-month period, when a monthly average of 2.4 loans were closed per worker.
Those numbers and more were included in the Mortgage Bankers Association’s Quarterly Mortgage Bankers Performance Report Q1 2016.
The report reflected responses from 347 independent mortgage bankers or mortgage subsidiaries of banks.
For comparison of prior-quarter data, just the 307 companies that participated in both the first-quarter 2016 and fourth-quarter 2015 surveys were measured.
Average monthly closings for production employees was 2.4 loans in the first quarter of last year.
Looking at just sales employees, average monthly originations were 5.8 loans, worse than the 7.2 average in the fourth-quarter 2015 and the 6.8 average in the first-quarter 2015.
Monthly closings per sales employee
were 7.3 at companies that originated more than $0.250 billion in the first quarter and just 4.9 at firms with less than $0.050 billion in production.
The average production at the firms observed was
2,307 loans closed for $0.544 billion during the latest three-month period.
Business slipped from the final quarter of 2015, when an average of 2,333 mortgages were funded for $0.549 billion.
Activity ascended, though, from the year-earlier quarter, when
an average of 1,917 loans were closed for $0.473 billion.
But despite the decreased production, mortgage bankers earned 34 basis points on each loan, improving from 21 BPS three months earlier
but still short of 60 BPS a year earlier.
The latest quarterly production earnings were 45 BPS for companies with more than $0.250 billion in fundings and a negative 2 BPS for lenders with less than $0.050 billion in volume.
Based on origination channel, organizations that generate business solely through the retail channel earned 43 BPS, while the average dropped to 21 BPS for entities with at least 75 percent of their business derived from the wholesale channel.
Net secondary
marketing income was raised to 308 BPS from 287 BPS and was also higher than 297 BPS in the same period last year.
Rising secondary marketing gains contributed to the first-quarter 2016 net.
Average employment at the surveyed firms was virtually unchanged from the end of last year at 359 people. But staffing has grown from 279 employees in the first three-month period in 2015.
