Although HomeStreet Inc. experienced a drop in home lending and mortgage earnings, it managed to expand its mortgage servicing and staffing.
Single-family mortgage originations during the three months ended Sept. 30 came to $1.934 billion.
The bank-holding company released the operational details, as well as other financial data, as part of its third-quarter earnings report.
Business declined from the second quarter, when a record $2.023 billion was closed.
But mortgage production improved from the third-quarter 2014, when $1.295 billion in residential loans were funded.
“In the third quarter, HomeStreet was the number one originator by volume of purchase mortgages in the Puget Sound region, based on the combined originations of HomeStreet and loans originated through an affiliated business arrangement known as WMS Series LLC,” the report stated.
From Jan. 1 through Sept. 30 of this year, mortgage production amounted to $5.564 billion.
At $1.8 billion,
single family mortgage interest rate lock commitments were off four percent from the prior period.
Multifamily loan originations fell to $0.047 billion in the latest quarter from $0.080 billion three months earlier and $0.061 billion a year earlier.
Year-to-date Sept. 30, 2015, multifamily production totaled $0.152 billion.
The Seattle-based bank serviced $14.271 billion in single-family loans for third parties as of Sept. 30, 2015. The servicing portfolio was bolstered from $12.980 billion as of June 30 and $10.593 billion as of Sept. 30, 2014.
Last month’s third-party servicing portfolio included $13.591 billion in U.S. government and agency loans.
Residential loan assets totaled $1.409 billion as of the end of last month, growing from $1.399 billion at the end of June and $0.927 billion as of the same date last year.
The Sept. 30, 2015, total included $1.172 billion in single-family loans and $0.237 billion in home-equity and other loans.
Multifamily loans serviced for third parties finished September 2015 at $0.867 billion, growing from $0.840 billion in the previous report and $0.703 billion in the year-earlier report.
Commercial real estate loans on HomeStreet’s balance sheet ended the most-recent period at
$1.476 billion. The CRE loan portfolio was up from $1.369 billion as of the end of the second quarter and $0.891 billion at the end of the third-quarter 2014.
Last month’s CRE holdings included $0.563 billion in commercial mortgages, $0.382 billion in multifamily loans and $0.530 billion in construction-and-land-development loans.
Mortgage banking income before income taxes tumbled to $5 million from $14 million in the second quarter. But mortgage earnings were up from $2 million in the third-quarter 2014.
“The $6.4 million decrease in net income from the second quarter of 2015 was primarily due to lower net gain on single-family mortgage loan origination and sale activities due to lower servicing origination values and lower secondary market gains,” the report said of after-tax mortgage income.
At the bank-holding company level, HomeStreet earned $14 million, down from $18 million in the second-quarter 2015 but better than $7 million in the third-quarter 2014.
Within the bank’s mortgage business,
1,293 people were on its payroll as of Sept. 30, 2015. Staffing expanded from 1,207 employees the prior quarter and 993 people in the year-prior quarter.
Company-wide staffing finished last month at 2,100 full-time equivalent employees. Headcount ascended from 1,964 people three months earlier and 1,598 employees 12 months earlier.
During the most-recent three-month period, nine home-loan centers were added, leaving 64 total centers.
Retail deposit branches ended the third quarter at 43, increasing by 10 from the second quarter.
HomeStreet said it reached an agreement on Sept. 28 to acquire
Orange County Business Bank, an acquisition that is expected to closed in the first quarter of next year.
