NMLS Reports # of Lenders, Brokers & LOs

More than a hundred-thousand loan originators are registered in the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System & Registry, according to a new report that also lists the number of lenders, mortgage brokers and branches. While California dominates the registrations, Texas ranks high among registered lenders and loan originators, and Ohio has a high branch count.

A first-quarter report from the NMLS indicated that the number of unique companies registered in the registry was 14,980. Including NMLS registrations under other trade names, the number nearly doubled to 28,415.

A majority of the companies, 62 percent, operated as corporations.

California’s 5,692 registered entities were the most of any state. Texas followed with 1,444 registrants, then New York’s 1,159, Pennsylvania’s 954 and Georgia’s 860. At the low end of the count was Vermont, where just 181 companies were registered.

The report indicated that 15,957 unique branches were registered, while the count including doing-business-as entities brings the total to 24,021. Companies operating with a single branch accounted for 87 percent of the companies. The average branch count was 1.06.

Although California’s 3,519 registered branches were more than any other state, No. 2 was Ohio, where 1,450 branches were registered.

Individuals registered numbered 100,098, and the count including DBAs was 182,880. Most companies, 83 percent, employed between one and five loan originators. The average firm employed 5.5 loan originators.

The state with the most registered originators was California, where the count was 29,319. A distant second was Texas’ 11,216. No other state topped 10,000 in this category.

At 13,298, mortgage brokers licensed to originate first mortgages accounted for 89 percent of the NMLS database.

Licensed second-mortgage brokers numbered 11,065. Nearly three-quarters of all registrants had second-mortgage loan brokering licenses.

There were 3,308 licensed first-mortgage lenders that made up 22 percent of registered entities, while the number of second mortgage lenders licensed was 2,466 and represented 16 percent of the total. There were 7,038 entities licensed to originate home-equity loans and home-equity lines of credit.

NMLS said 30 percent of registrants were Federal Housing Administration loan correspondents, though this group will by gone by the time of the first report in 2012 since the Department of Housing and Urban Development has done away with FHA correspondents. The number of FHA correspondents was 4,473. In addition, 1,376 were FHA direct-endorsement mortgagees.

Registrants approved to close loans guaranteed by the Department of Veterans Affairs amounted to 5,292, representing more than a third of the database.

Reverse mortgage firms totaled 3,515, with nearly a quarter of registrants falling in this category.

Companies operating in just one state totaled 12,503, or 83 percent of licensed companies. The share wasn’t much different for individual originators doing business in just a single state: 80 percent.

The report also broke out licensed servicers, as summarized in the following table.