| SWBC Mortgage buys new branches, hires over 100 employees
Southwest Business Corp.'s mortgage division has purchased the assets of 15 branches of lender Home Loan Corp. As a result, SWBC Mortgage Corp. has picked up 114 new employees and new locations nationwide. Company officials would not reveal the purchase price of the branches. Houston-based Home Loan Corp. is a mortgage lender that's licensed in nine states. The company continues to operate branches not included in the purchase agreement with SWBC. SWBC Mortgage now has additional offices in Arlington, Austin, Clear Lake and Spring, Texas; Baton Rouge and Shreveport, La.; Olympia, Wash.; and Bountiful, Utah. "The new group both supports and strengthens our existing talent pool which complements our future growth strategy nicely," says Susan Stewart, president and CEO of SWBC Mortgage.
A lender's recipe for downfall
The home loan program was dubbed South Street.
It turned the idea of credit risk on its head. Consumers just exiting bankruptcy could get a mortgage with few questions. They could have some of the lowest possible credit scores. And they didn't have to submit any pay stubs or tax returns.
Subprime mortgage lender Fieldstone Investment Corp. of Columbia created the loan program during the real-estate gold rush in 2004 as competitors flooded the market.
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Obama's backyard economics session
Barack Obama sat in registered nurse Mimi Vitello's sunny backyard in Van Nuys and listened as she and three other local voters talked about their worries over home loans and credit card debt. The presidential hopeful listened intently and said the mortgage and credit card industries were skewed against working Americans.
"The deck has been stacked in favor of the big banks and the big financial companies and not for the consumers and homeowners," he told the residents.
They sat around a table outside Vitello's modest home, which she bought with an interest-only loan. Now that loan worries her. "My income is not going to jump ahead, and here comes my interest-only [payment hikes] in a couple years," Vitello said.
Obama noted that foreclosures could cost California's economy $23 billion, and he blamed the federal government for not regulating lenders.
A new leniency in mortgage rescues
The mortgage industry gladly helps people buy homes when the market is up. How much will it help borrowers keep their homes in down times? Last week, the Bush administration got an answer: When all parties win in loan readjustments. Since August, the Treasury Department has corralled top players in the business to set a new industry standard for rescuing homeowners who will face higher interest rates in the next couple years under what are called subprime loans, or 6.5 percent of all mortgages. A collective response by lenders will be one small step for easing a housing depression and a giant leap for many borrowers. By winning such a pact to aid troubled homeowners who meet certain credit thresholds, the government must now watch closely to see how this finely threaded deal plays out – and how fast.
In Search of a Subprime Villain
The panic of 1869 had Jay Gould and Jim Fisk. The junk-bond insider scandals had Ivan Boesky and Mike Milken. And turn-of-the-21st century book-cooking had poster boys Jeff Skilling and Bernie Ebbers. Now, the subprime meltdown cries out for its own icon—an easily vilified, Leno-quotable, high-seven-figured household name. If there were Vegas odds for this kind of thing, the money would be on Angelo Mozilo, founder and chief executive of Countrywide Financial (CFC), the largest U.S. mortgage lender and the source of so many of the bad home loans that have gummed up the global financial system. But don't finger Mozilo just yet. The scale, ripple effect, and emotional particulars of this bust make it uniquely hard to pin on one character. Countrywide will become less newsworthy as it is acquired by Bank of America (BAC), an outcome regulators want to hasten.
Foreclosure.Com Partners with Indymac Bank to Help Lender Market and ...
BOCA RATON, Fla., Oct. 24 /PRNewswire/ -- Foreclosure.com today announced a partnership with Indymac Bank(R) - the seventh-largest savings and loan in the nation - to market and facilitate the sale of thousands of Real Estate Owned (REO) properties via the Internet, adding another major national lender to its growing stable of prominent data sources. Foreclosure.com maintains a nationwide database of more the 1.2 million listings that includes foreclosures, preforeclosures, bankruptcies, For Sale by Owner (FSBO) homes and tax liens in one convenient location. Leveraging the Internet and a massive audience, Foreclosure.com is the ideal conduit to connect qualified buyers with motivated sellers. "More than 80 percent buyers now start their home searches on the Internet," said Foreclosure.com Founder, President and CEO, Brad Geisen.
Schwarzenegger Visits Oakland, Brings Foreclosure Help
OAKLAND, Calif. -- California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger Friday came to Oakland, which has the 10th-highest foreclosure rate in the nation, to announce a new fund aimed at helping local homeowners who are facing foreclosure to keep their homes. OneCalifornia Foundation founders Kat Taylor and Tom Steyer contributed the initial donation of $1 million to a bridge loan fund that will be administered by the foundation in Oakland. The bridge loan will assist homeowners who don't qualify for other assistance, such as Schwarzenegger's agreement with loan servicers announced last month, or President George W. Bush's nationwide agreement with subprime lenders announced Thursday. .
UK lenders steer away from 100% mortgages
Mortgage lenders are withdrawing from offering 100 per cent home loans over fears that such products will now attract a flood of high-risk borrowers. Those lenders still offering 100 per cent deals are now charging interest rates of 8 per cent or more. In recent months, 10 lenders have stopped offering to advance the full value of a property, reducing the availability of these mortgages by almost one third compared with a year ago. But while brokers blame concerns over liquidity and a weakening housing market, some lenders admit they do not want to bear the cost of processing – and rejecting – applications from bad credit risks. Some providers fear as competitors withdraw from the market, they will face a sharp increase in applications. Norwich and Peterborough has now reduced its maximum loan-to-value from 100 per cent to 90 per cent.
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