Category: Mortgage Information

Mortgage Bankers
Mortgage Bankers are lenders that are large enough to originate loans and create pools of loans which they sell directly to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Ginnie Mae, jumbo loan investors, and others. Any company that does this is considered to be a mortgage banker.  Some companies don’t sell directly to those major investors, but sell their loans to the mortgage bankers. They often refer to themselves as mortgage bankers as well. Since they are actually engaging in the selling of loans, there is some justification for using this label. The point is that you cannot reliably determine the size or strength of a particular lender based on whether or not they identify themselves as a mortgage banker.

Portfolio Lenders
An institution which is lending their own money and originating loans for itself is called a “portfolio lender.” This is because they are lending for their own portfolio of loans and not worried about being able to immediately sell them on the secondary market. Because of this, they don’t have to obey Fannie/Freddie guidelines and can create their own rules for determining credit worthiness. Usually these institutions are larger banks and savings & loans.  Quite often only a portion of their loan programs are “portfolio” product. If they are offering fixed rate loans or government loans, they are certainly engaging in mortgage banking as well as portfolio lending.
Once a borrower has made the payments on a portfolio loan for over a year without any late payments, the loan is considered to be “seasoned.” Once a loan has a track history of timely payments it becomes marketable, even if it does not meet Freddie/Fannie guidelines.  Selling these “seasoned” loans frees up more money for the “portfolio” lender to make more loans. If they are sold, they are packaged into pools and sold on the secondary market. You will probably not even realize your loan is sold because, quite likely, you will still make your loan payments to the same lender, which has now become your “servicer.”

Direct Lenders
Lenders are considered to be direct lenders if they fund their own loans. A “direct lender” can range anywhere from the biggest lender to a very tiny one. Banks and savings & loans obviously have deposits they can use to fund loans with, but they usually use “warehouse lines of credit” from which they draw the money to fund the loans. Smaller institutions also have warehouse lines of credit from which they draw money to fund loans.
Direct lenders usually fit into the category of mortgage bankers or portfolio lenders, but not always.
One way you used to be able to distinguish a direct lender was from the fact that the loan documents were drawn up in their name, but this is no longer the case. Even the tiniest mortgage broker can make arrangements to fund loans in their own name nowadays.

Correspondents
Correspondent is usually a term that refers to a company which originates and closes home loans in their own name, then sells them individually to a larger lender, called a sponsor. The sponsor acts as the mortgage banker, re-selling the loan to Ginnie Mae, Fannie Mae, or Freddie Mac as part of a pool. The correspondent may fund the loans themselves or funding may take place from the larger company. Either way, the loan is usually underwritten by the sponsor.  It is almost like being a mortgage broker, except that there is usually a very strong relationship between the correspondent and their sponsor.

Mortgage Brokers
Mortgage Brokers are companies that originate loans with the intention of brokering them to lending institutions. A broker has established relationships with these companies. Underwriting and funding takes place at the larger institutions. Many mortgage brokers are also correspondents.  Mortgage brokers deal with lending institutions that have a wholesale loan department.

Wholesale Lenders
Most mortgage bankers and portfolio lenders also act as wholesale lenders, catering to mortgage brokers for loan origination. Some wholesale lenders do not even have their own retail branches, relying solely on mortgage brokers for their loans. These wholesale divisions offer loans to mortgage brokers at a lower cost than their retail branches offer them to the general public. The mortgage broker then adds on his fee. The result for the borrower is that the loan costs about the same as if he obtained a loan directly from a retail branch of the wholesale lender.

Banks and Savings & Loans – Banks and savings & loans usually operate as portfolio lenders, mortgage bankers, or some combination of both.

Credit Unions – Credit Unions usually seem to operate as correspondents, although a large one could act as a portfolio lender or a mortgage banker.

In the “olden” days, when someone wanted a home loan they walked downtown to the neighborhood bank or savings & loan. If the bank had extra funds laying around and considered you a good credit risk, they would lend you the money from their own funds.

It doesn’t generally work like that anymore. Most of the money for home loans comes from three major institutions:

• Fannie Mae (FNMA – Federal National Mortgage Association)
• Freddie Mac (FHLMC – Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation)
• Ginnie Mae (GNMA – Government National Mortgage Association)

This is how it works:

You talk to practically any lender and apply for a loan. They do all the processing and verifications and finally, you own the house and now you have a home loan and you make mortgage payments. You might be making payments to the company who originated your loan, or your loan might have been transferred to another institution. The institution where you mail your payments is called the “servicer,” but most likely they do not own your loan. They are simply “servicing” your loan for the institution that does own it.

You see, what happens behind the scenes is that your loan got packaged into a “pool” with a lot of other loans and sold off to one of the three institutions listed above. The servicer of your loan gets a monthly fee from the investor for servicing your loan. This fee is usually only 3/8ths of a percent or so, but the amount adds up. There are companies that service over a billion dollars of home loans and it is a tidy income.

At the same time, whichever institution packaged your loan into the pool for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, or Ginnie Mae, has received additional funds with which to make more loans to other borrowers. This is the cycle that allows institutions to lend you money.

What Freddie Mac, Ginnie Mae, and Fannie may do after they purchase the pools, is break them down into smaller increments of $1000 or so, called “mortgage backed securities.” They sell these mortgage backed securities to individuals or institutions on Wall Street. If you have a 401K or mutual fund, you may even own some. Perhaps you have heard of Ginnie Mae bonds? Those are securities backed by the mortgages on FHA and VA loans.

These bonds are not ownership in your loan specifically, but a piece of ownership in the entire pool of loans, of which your loan is only one among many. By selling the bonds, Ginnie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Fannie Mae obtain new funds to buy new pools so lenders can get more money to lend to new borrowers.

And that is how the cycle works.

So when you make your payment, the servicer gets to keep their tiny part, and the majority is passed on to the investor. Then the investor passes on the majority of it to the individual or institutional investor in the mortgage backed securities.

From time to time your loan may be transferred from the company where you have been making your payment to another company. They aren’t selling your loan again, just the right to service your loan.

There are exceptions.

Loans above $227,150 do not conform to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac guidelines, which is why they are called “non-conforming” loans, or “jumbo” loans. These loans are packaged into different pools and sold to different investors, not Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae. Then they are securitized and for the most part, sold as mortgage backed securities as well.

This buying and selling of mortgages and mortgage backed securities is called “mortgage banking,” and it is the backbone of the mortgage business.

Mortgage interest rates in the US continue to defy all odds and remain slightly below the 5% range for a 30-yr fixed rate loan.  Below are the average interest rates and APR’s being charged by some of America’s leading mortgage servicers:

30-Yr Fixed                    4.810%     4.925%
30-Yr Fixed FHA            5.125%     5.850%
15-Yr Fixed                    4.250%     4.470%
5-Yr ARM                       3.750%     3.519%
5-Yr ARM FHA               3.750%     3.342%
Jumbo Loans:
30-Year Fixed                5.500%     5.643%
5-Year ARM                   5.000%     3.930%

Remember that these rates will not necessarily reflect the rates offered to every borrower. Rates vary depending on the borrowers financial situation and the way they have managed debt in the past.  We recommended reputable lenders.  Call us (665-8559) if you need contact information for a reputable lender.