Gains from mortgage-servicing rights helped the nation’s servicers earn more during the latest quarter. Productivity substantially deteriorated, though, from a year ago.
Independent mortgage servicers and mortgage banking subsidiaries of chartered banks serviced an average of 96,992 loans with an unpaid principal balance of $16.643 billion as of March 31.
Average servicing portfolios increased from 94,760 loans for $16.110 billion three months earlier and 76,256 loan for $12.758 billion one year earlier.
Those details and more were provided by the
Mortgage Bankers Association in its Quarterly Mortgage Bankers Performance Report Q1 2018.
While
208 servicers participated in the most-recent study, only the 166 who participated in the latest and fourth-quarter surveys are reflected in the quarterly comparisons.
Average headcount among the firms surveyed was 137 employees, up six people from the fourth-quarter 2017 and 47 more than in the first-quarter 2017.
That brought the average loans serviced per full-time employee to 1,084. Although the level of efficiency inched up from 1,032 in the prior period, it was much worse than 1,423 in the year-earlier period.
Net financial income surged to 16 basis points from less than 3 BPS in the previous three-month period
and 11 BPS in the same-three months during 2017.
Helping to improve earnings were financial items tied to MSRs, which swung to a 4-basis-point profit from an 8-basis-point loss in the fourth quarter.
“For mortgage bankers who held mortgage servicing rights, higher per-loan servicing revenues and gains on the valuation of servicing helped overall profitability,” Marina Walsh, vice president of industry analysis at MBS, said in a news release.
At companies that serviced between 10,000 and 50,000 loans, profits were 22 BPS, while they plummeted to 8 BPS at firms with portfolios of less than 2,500 mortgages.
