Even though residential loan production was down for the retail channel, SunTrust Banks Inc.’s correspondent acquisitions jumped by a third — pushing overall originations up.
Home-lending volume was $4.528 billion in the third quarter, earnings data indicate.
Business exceeded the $4.084 billion in second-quarter volume previously reported.
Origination activity plunged, however, from $7.995 billion one year prior.
During the nine months ended last month, SunTrust generated $11.718 billion in production.
Although overall activity was up from the second quarter, retail activity slowed to $2.047 billion in the third quarter from $2.204 billion.
It was the correspondent channel that drove the increase, jumping to $2.481 billion from $1.879 billion.
Refinance share inched up to 35 percent from a third in the second quarter.
Mortgage originations could weaken in the fourth quarter based on new loan applications, which dropped to $6.4 billion from $6.7 billion in the second quarter.
SunTrust’s total mortgage servicing portfolio was $135.804 billion. growing from $134.420 billion as of June 30. The portfolio was lower, however, than $139.710 billion as of Sept. 30, 2013.
Mortgages serviced for others made up $109.142 billion of the latest portfolio.
Residential assets on the balance sheet were reduced to $38.758 billion from $39.353 billion in the last report and $42.459 billion a year prior. The latest total was comprised of $0.7 billion in guaranteed residential loans, $23.7 billion in non-guaranteed residential loans and $14.389 billion in home-equity assets.
SunTrust reports delinquency of between 30 and 89 days. On the non-guaranteed portion of its residential loans, the rate of late payments was 0.45 percent, easing from 0.46 percent at mid-year and better than 0.65 percent 12 months earlier.
Home-equity delinquency declined to 0.70 percent from 0.72 percent as of June 30 and 0.82 percent as of Sept. 30, 2013.
SunTrust said it owned $0.464 billion in residential construction loans, $0.044 billion less than in the previous report. Delinquency on this portion of investments climbed to 1.03 percent from 0.76 percent.
The Atlanta-based company’s commercial real estate investment portfolio expanded to $7.954 billion from $7.201 billion in the second-quarter and $5.492 billion in the third-quarter 2013. Last month’s total was made up of $6.7 billion in commercial mortgages and $1.3 billion in commercial construction loans.
Commercial mortgage delinquency inched up to 0.08 percent in the third quarter from 0.07 percent, while commercial construction late payments soared to 0.19 percent from 0.04 percent.
Within its mortgage business, SunTrust earned $89 million, slipping from $97 million three months earlier but leaping from $1 million twelve months earlier.
Third-quarter 2014 mortgage earnings included $45 million from production and $44 million from servicing.
SunTrust earned $643 million before income taxes from all sources, climbing from $576 million in the prior period and rocketing from just $63 million in the year-earlier period.
SunTrust finished the latest period with 25,074 full-time employees, trimming its staff from 25,841 at the end of the second quarter. Headcount was also down from 26,409.
As of Sept. 30, 2014, SunTrust operated 1,454 full-service banking offices, 19 fewer than as of June 30.
