Quarterly refinance activity accelerated at Wells Fargo & Co., driving up overall lending activity. Indications are that elevated originations continued in the second quarter.
Residential loan originations during the three months ended March 31 were $49 billion, first-quarter earnings data indicate.
Business at the San Francisco-based based financial institution improved from the previous three-month period, when $44 billion in mortgages were funded.
Residential loan production was also better than the first three months of 2014, when volume was just $36 billion.
Refinance share soared to 55 percent from the fourth quarter’s 40 percent.
Retail originations accounted for $28 billion of first-quarter activity, while $20 billion was generated through correspondent acquisitions and $1 billion came from the origination of home-equity loans and home-equity lines of credit.
The second quarter is looking good for Wells Fargo, with loan applications rising to $93 billion in the latest period from $66 billion in the fourth quarter. New applications pushed the application pipeline up to $44 billion as of March 31 from just $26 billion at the end of last year.
The total residential servicing portfolio was $1.718 trillion as of the most-recent date, off from $1.747 trillion as of the close of the prior period and down from $1.807 trillion as of the same period last year.
Last month’s total included $1.374 trillion serviced for others and $0.344 trillion in owned loans. An additional $0.005 trillion in loans were sub-serviced.
Wells Fargo owned
$323.052 billion in residential assets as of the close of the first-quarter 2015. This segment of its balance sheet was down from $325.103 billion as of the end of the prior quarter and $323.486 billion as of the same date in 2014.
The March 31, 2015, residential assets included $265.213 billion in one-to-four-unit first mortgages and $57.839 billion in junior liens.
Wells Fargo serviced $573 billion in commercial mortgages, more than the $568 billion serviced three months earlier and $532 billion serviced twelve months earlier. The latest figure consisted of $461 billion in third-party servicing and $112 billion in investment loans. An additional $7 billion was sub-serviced.
Commercial real estate assets ended March at
$131.829 billion, up from $130.724 billion as of Dec. 31, 2014, and $129.736 billion as of March 31, 2014.
The latest CRE total included $111.848 billion in commercial mortgages and $19.981 billion in construction loans.
The mortgage banking business earned $1.547 billion, slightly more than the $1.515 billion earned in the fourth quarter and $1.510 billion in the first-quarter 2014.
Prior to income tax expense, Wells Fargo & Co. earned $8.2 billion, slipping from $8.3 billion in the fourth quarter and $8.4 billion in the first-quarter 2014.
Staffing across the entire Wells Fargo organization finished last month at
266,000 employees, growing headcount from 264,500 at the end of 2014 and 265,300 at the same point in 2014.
Wells Fargo reported 8,700 locations.
