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The race for the exits is intensifying among big banks that purchase mortgages from correspondent lenders, creating liquidity issues for loan originators and radically reshaping mortgage servicing.
January 30 -
Wholesale lenders table funded almost $33 billion of loans in the third quarter, giving the channel a 9.2% market share, according to new figures compiled by National Mortgage News and the Quarterly Data Report.
December 9
CitiMortgage, the nation's sixth largest residential wholesaler, Wednesday afternoon informed its loan brokers that it will cease table funding loans next week as it prepares to exit the channel.
A spokesman for Citigroup Inc.'s mortgage unit says that most mortgage workers in the wholesale division will be absorbed into the company.
"The jobs lost will be in the low double-digits," he says.
CitiMortgage will only honor rate locks that come in by Feb. 8.
"All locked pipelines must be funded and closed by April 30, 2012," writes John Hummel, vice president and national sales director at the bank, in a memo to brokers.
According to figures compiled by National Mortgage News, CitiMortgage funded $1.5 billion of home mortgages through brokers in the third quarter.
Table funding accounts for just 9% of its total fundings, National Mortgage News found.
The Citigroup spokesman says the bank will remain in retail and correspondent lending.
One broker who has done business with Citigroup dismissed the announcement.
"To tell you the truth, their rates were nothing special," he says.
Three years ago CitiMortgage cut its wholesale division to the bone but then slowly re-grew the business starting in late 2010.
