Aug. 23, 2007: What the heck is going on?

Did you know that more than half of the coastline of the entire United States is in Alaska?

“When I die, I want to die like my grandfather–who died peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming like all the passengers in his car.”

Who really knows that is going on? Large mortgage companies are exiting, and will continue to exit, the business while still others are scrambling to increase market share by loosening their guidelines, decreasing their profit margins, or merging/acquiring other lenders.

• Accredited Home Lenders plans to shut down most of its business by cutting its work force from 2,600 to 1,000 people and closing 65 branches. The company will immediately stop accepting applications for home loans in the US and will close its retail lending business and also scale back much of its wholesale lending division. They did $16 billion last year.
• Lehman Brothers became the first firm on Wall Street to close its subprime-lending unit (BNC, 23 offices in 8 states) and said 1,200 employees will lose their jobs. Lehman purchased the Irvine-based company in 2004. (The firm said it will continue making home loans through its Aurora Loan unit.) BNC made about $2 billion of loans in the first quarter, down 40% from a year earlier.
• HSBC is eliminating 600 positions in its U.S. operations and closing a mortgage office in Indiana.
• MortgageIT has reportedly ceased originating nonconforming loans.
• Bank of America announced that they would provide Countrywide with a much needed cash infusion by purchasing $2 billion of Countrywide’s preferred stock.  The investment by Bank of America has alleviated bankruptcy concerns about Countrywide and will probably further reduce some of the broader panic in the market. If Bank of America were to convert its shares under Countrywide’s current share count, it would hold about 17% of Countrywide’s shares, making BofA CW’s largest shareholder. (Alliance Bernstein owns the most Countrywide shares — about 63.7 million, or 11% of the company.)
• Indymac is resuming their jumbo business (after temporarily halting it) and will put the loans in their own portfolio since Wall Street is still hesitant to purchase them. Indymac is offering jumbo loans only to borrowers with good credit who can document their income: full doc.
• Since the start of the year, more than 40,000 workers have lost their jobs at mortgage lending institutions, according to recent company layoff announcements and data complied by global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. Meanwhile, construction companies have announced nearly 20,000 job cuts this year.
• Toll Brothers Inc. third-quarter profit plunged nearly 85 percent. Sales fell 21%, net signed contracts plummeted to $727 million, down 31%, and the quarterly cancellation rate was 23.8%, compared with 18.9% last quarter.
• First Collateral has implemented further restrictions on some warehouse lines, especially with regard to pay options, IO loans with less than 620 FICO, NIVA’s, NINA’s, non-agency SISA’s with less than 700 FICO, non-agency SISA’s with higher than 80 HLTV, and non-full doc 2nd liens unless FICO is above 700.