As mortgage servicers saw their portfolios sink by more than 40 percent last year, profits per loan more than doubled. Profits at the biggest servicers were about 12 times greater per loan than at the smallest operations.
The average mortgage servicing portfolio was 93,672 loans for $11.9 billion during 2009, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported today. Average portfolios sank from 141,240 loans for $21.1 billion in 2008.
The findings were based on data submitted by 104 mortgage servicers.
An MBA spokeswoman was not immediately available to provide any comments about whey the average servicing portfolio saw such a big decline.
Also deteriorating was the loans serviced per full-time employee — which dropped to 719 from 740 last year.
Servicers employed an average of 151 employees last year, more than the 136 reported for 2008. The average compensation per servicing employee rose to $51,218 from $48,406.
Moving on to earnings, per-loan profits rose to $51 during 2009 from a $19 loss per loan the year before.
But when broken down by portfolio size, servicers with a portfolio of less than 1,000 loans earned just $9 per loan compared to $159 per loan for companies that serviced more than 50,000 mortgages.
On a percentage basis, the average servicer earned 3.77 BPS per loan last year. Servicers with less than a thousand loans earned just 0.93 BPS, while servicers with more than 50,000 loans earned 11.43 BPS.
