Home-loan fundings at Bank of America Corp. were down a third in the first quarter of this year. The lender, however, has made progress on delinquency.
The Charlotte, N.C.-based company reported $58.5 billion in residential lending during the first quarter. Of that, $56.7 billion was first mortgages numbering 260,000.
Business sank from $86.8 billion originated by BofA in the final three months of last year. The latest period was also worse than the first-quarter 2010’s $71.5 billion.
The most-recent period included $1.7 billion in home-equity production, dropping from $2.1 billion during the prior quarter.
The mortgage servicing portfolio — including residential loans, home-equity loans, home-equity lines-of-credit and discontinued mortgages — finished March at $2.0280 trillion. The balance subsided from Dec. 31, 2010, when the portfolio stood at $2.0568 trillion and March 31, 2010, when the balance was $2.1437 trillion.
The March 31 figure included $1.610 trillion in mortgages serviced for investors, down from $1.628 trillion three months earlier.
It also included $261.9 billion in company-owned mortgages, $133.6 billion in HELs and $12.7 billion in discontinue real estate holdings.
Residential delinquency of at least 30 days was 8.51 percent, better than 9.18 percent in the prior quarter. In the first quarter of last year, the rate was higher at 10.45 percent.
BofA noted that its home-loan delinquency is only 2.81 percent when excluding loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration. In fact, “Total consumer 30+ day performing delinquency excluding FHA improved for the 8th consecutive quarter.”
Commercial real estate holdings finished the first quarter at $47.0 billion, lower than $49.4 billion at the end of last year.
New repurchase claims of $3.4 billion left the company with $8.8 billion in outstanding claims. Nearly three-quarters of new claims were from the 2006 or 2007 vintages.
Consumer real estate services suffered a net loss of $2.4 billion, though that was better than the $5.0 billion in losses recorded for the fourth quarter. A year prior, the loss was $2.1 billion.
The company explained that “legacy costs continue to impact results and originations have slowed.”
Net income for Bank of America Corp. swung to a $2.0 billion profit from a $1.2 billion loss in the fourth quarter. Income was lower, however, than $3.2 billion during the first three months of 2010.
“Results for the most recent quarter were positively affected by lower credit costs, gains from equity investments, and higher asset management fees and investment banking fees,” the report stated. “These factors were partially offset by higher legacy mortgage-related costs, higher litigation expenses, and lower sales and trading revenue from the record levels reported in the first quarter of 2010.”
The entire BofA organization employed 288,062 people as of March 31, a few hundred less than 288,471 at the end of 2010. However, that number might drop in the second-quarter report as a result of 1,500 layoffs disclosed Thursday for Bank of America Home Loans.
First-quarter 2010 headcount was 284,638.
The number of U.S. banking centers eased to 5,805 from 5,856 on Dec. 31, 2010.
