The Institutional Risk Analyst

We expect to see continued consolidation in the world of residential mortgage finance in coming months. The sad fact is that many less competitive businesses in mortgage finance have been waiting for the FOMC to ride to the rescue with lower interest rates. If rate cuts do not materialize in 2025, however, then many of these businesses may not survive.

While GHLD provides a lot of good information about their business, the investor disclosure provided by UWMC is a bad joke, especially when you remember that UWMC is the largest nonbank lender in the US. The Q1 2025 press release is just 9 pages in length and lacks some of the most basic financial information available from UWMC’s peers.

President Trump will not try to fire Chairman Powell. Why not? First, because Powell cannot be removed save for malfeasance. Second, because firing Powell would seriously piss off Senate Republicans, killing Trump's hopes for tax legislation this year.

COOP and RKT, plus RDFN, creates an integrated business of realty, lending, servicing and asset management that is impressive

We think it is notable that AMP has underperformed the other members of the group other than SCHW over the past year.

The majority of the actual cash profit generated from residential lending is found in the mortgage servicing rights (MSRs).

Selling the Treasury's control position in the GSEs while dragging the furious shareholders along behind is not an attractive opportunity

Yes, that's right, we are going to downgrade $8 trillion in GSE MBS and hundreds of billions in corporate debt.

BLND is generating operating leverage via cost reductions, another way of saying that management is slowly winding up the business.

Notice that SQ co-founder Jack Dorsey styles himself as "block head" in the corp roster, a silly affectation that does not help the stock

You can tell lies and damn lies about the idea of releasing Fannie and Freddie, but the SEC and FINRA cannot and will not say a word. 

NYCB and the unsold rent-stabilized assets left over from the failure of SBNY are two little surprises waiting for the next POTUS.

The Citi decision to exit mortgage servicing perhaps made sense in 2017, but today not so much.

Yellen's proposal for a backstop is merely a canard to help Treasury avoid another fiasco next time a Ginnie Mae issuer fails

Joe Otting does not seem to understand the value of the Flagstar correspondent lending and mortgage servicing business...

Of note, PFSI has been growing share in wholesale, a direct challenge to UWMC

Citi is a subprime lender. They should be directly involved in government lending.

The survivors in mortgage finance optimize operations around purchasing loans from brokers/ correspondents, and direct to consumer (DTC)

If the run-of-the-mill Republic First interest rate mark is 13.3% of assets that is not just wiping out one bank’s 8% capital but also FDIC

We see higher credit costs, narrowing NIM and still rising funding costs squeezing the banking industry in Q1 2024...