While home loan originations were lower at Quicken Loans Inc., the decline was half as bad as the overall industry’s. The firm’s mortgage servicing portfolio, meanwhile, increased in size.
During the three months ended March 31, the Detroit-based lender closed $11.2 billion in residential loan production, according to the Mortgage Daily First Quarter 2014 Mortgage Origination Survey.
New business wasn’t as good as in the fourth quarter of last year, when Quicken originated $12.6 billion.
However, the 11 percent quarter-over-quarter decline was less than the 24 percent industry-wide decline estimated by Mortgage Daily.
Loan fundings at Quicken have plunged compared to the first-quarter 2013, when loan production was $25.5 billion.
The drop in activity came just three months after Quicken annual originations reached a record $78.9 billion.
But the company did manage to grow it mortgage servicing portfolio — to $143.5 billion from $140.5 billion as of Dec. 31, 2013.
As of March 31, 2013, Quicken serviced $123.3 billion.
Moving on to staffing, Quicken reported that more than 10,000 people were on its payroll at the end of the first-quarter 2014.
Headcount was about the same as it was at the end of last year but higher than 8,000 employees at the same point last year.