Last year three-fifths of America's mortgages and one-quarter of consumer debt were bundled up and sold on.Along the way, banks cooked up a simmering alphabet soup.
But the bank is locked until the end of 2009 into a contract to buy at least £350m of mortgages each quarter from GMAC, a loan supplier.
Bank stocks slid after National City said third-quarter mortgage revenue would be significantly lower than in the year's first two quarters.
However, in the September quarter Mortgage.com's revenue slipped 13% to $12 million versus an average sequential gain of 13% over the previous four quarters.
Capstead Mortgage posted fourth-quarter net income of $15.86 million, or 31 cents a share, versus a $2.35 million profit in the quarter the previous year.
The bank, which is based in Memphis and has 732 branches, said fourth-quarter mortgage volume might fall more than 50percentt from the third quarter, resulting in 2003 earnings per share of $2.51 to $2.56.
Mr. Cecala says many borrowers refinancing these days are at least second-timers — he, for one, did so last fall in order to cut his mortgage interest three-quarters of a percentage point — but he said he knew of no specific data tracking this trend.
A glimpse of second-quarter mortgage data, however, indicates that the progress Mr. Dugan and his colleagues in Washington are hoping for may take longer to emerge — raising questions about whether policymakers and banks are moving quickly or intelligently enough on the foreclosure problem.
Most of that business was refinance applications, but about 25percentt came from customers looking to purchase homes, Atkins said, noting the recent quarter's mortgage activity has been among the strongest quarters since the housing market began to collapse in 2007.
