Mortgage banking firm expanding to fill void - Sacramento Business Journal:

geqopimozaqyxyh.blogspot.com
The company is expanding at a time when many of its competitorws are retrenching orclosing down, leaving Summitg to fill the vacuum. “Therde is a need out there for mortgagsebanking services,” said Todd Scrima, presideny of Summit Funding. “We could do 100 new offices, but we are goinb to do about sixthis year. We are reallhy picky.” Summit is moving from its 12,000-square-foot headquarterx in Gold River toa 14,500-square-foot officwe at Fair Oaks Boulevard and Munroe Although it doesn’t look like a big move, the new site providesd a substantial increase in functional space, Scrima said.
The mortgages banker has added 20 employee over thepast year, bringing the total count to 160. Many of the new hirese are at thecorporate office, doingb underwriting and documentation for 13 branch officees in six states. Four of thos e offices are new, with three brancheas in Oregon coming online within the past 30 days and a Washingtonb state office openinglast Monday. A Michigann office will be added laterthis year, Scrima said, the first Summit office in that Several other new offices also are also in the Like in many industrieas during the recession, the stronger playere in the mortgage industry are surviving and even growinyg to fill the void left by the companiew that have crumbled.
Many mortgage banks, brokersw and commercial banks have toppled in the past coupleeof years, said Kurt Reisig, president of , a Rose­villwe firm with 170 retail branches in the Western states. Mortgage brokers have been particularluhard hit. Unlike mortgage bankers, which fund theirt own loans, brokers are basically salespeoples who sell loans to a varietyof buyers, includin g wholesale lenders. About 70 percent of the companies that did wholesale lending to mortgage brokerss at the peak of the market are no longedr doing it or haveclosed altogether. That’es good news for mortgage which are being pursued by brokers looking for companies that canoriginatew loans.
New regulations also are creating hard time s formortgage brokers. For example, new federalk disclosure rules require brokers to disclose what they are beinhg paid fora loan. That fee is then negotiable. The disclosurre requirements are “just another challenge for mortgags brokers who already have a slew of new challengez raining downon them,” Reisi g said. “Rightly or wrongly, the mortgage brokers are havingh a tough time going it aloneright now. Therw are companies that are outright saying they are notdoing third-party originated loans,” said Dusti n Hobbs, spokesman with the .
Mortgage banks are more highlyt regulated than brokers and are subject toreserve requirements. They also have their own money inthe game, which tends to make them more Hobbs said. Several years ago, in the heat of the housingt bubble, many mortgage banks had internal wars betweenb their sales andunderwriting departments, Hobbe said. Those who maintained strict underwriting standardsmostly survived, while companies that relie d on alternative loans tended to run into Hobbs said.
Summit Funding never made subprimre loans, according to “It was just a weird and it didn’t make Instead, during the boom, Scrimaq said he anticipated the bust and ramped up his abilityu tooffer government-backed mortgages. Government loan programs, like Federa Home Administration, Veterans Administration and Departmentfof Agriculture, all now a stapl e at Summit, accounted for only aboutr 3 percent of all mortgages during the boom They now make up abour half the market, Scrima said. “Government lending isn’ft something a lender can switchto overnight. It requires specific underwriting, different rules and some required Scrima said.
The market shakeup is creating new niches for a business ready to he said. “There is opportunity in an upset marketplace,” Scrimz said. “I don’t care what business you are in, you have to take some chancesand ... know what is going on.” It’s also important to hedge your Companies that already were subject to sternb underwriting are being even morecarefup now, Reisig said. “We want to contro the service we provide with much greater efficiencyy and to controlthe underwriting,” he said. “You just have to do that today.
Peopl expect you to do