ABOUT TIME: Cost to originate mortgages finally gets cheaper

After barely surviving the subprime crisis and housing collapse, and then enduring the agony of burdensome regulatory changes and the advent of a new mortgage watchdog, mortgage originators finally, FINALLY, have some good news to spread.

Well, it only took about 8 years but...  the Mortgage Bankers Association just said that total loan production expenses – commissions, compensation, occupancy, equipment, and other production expenses and corporate allocations – decreased to $6,984 per loan in the second quarter of 2015, from $7,195 in the first quarter of 2015.

This is after years of mortgage production cost slowing inching their way up into the stratosphere. Here's a laundry list of that sad, cruel progression.

What's more, independent mortgage banks and mortgage subsidiaries of chartered banks reported a net gain of $1,522 on each loan they originated in the second quarter of 2015, up from a reported gain of $1,447 per loan in the first quarter of 2015,reported today in its Quarterly Mortgage Bankers Performance Report.

“Average company production volume was up in the second quarter, as purchase volume grew and mortgage pipelines from the first quarter’s refinance boomlet closed,” said Marina Walsh, MBA’s Vice President of Industry Analysis. “The production volume increase resulted in a nominal decrease in per-loan production expenses, which offset a decrease in secondary marketing income.

“However, by historical standards, production expenses remained elevated given that the average company production volume was at the highest level since inception of the study in 2008,” she said.

Other key findings of MBA’s Quarterly Mortgage Bankers Performance Report include:

see more at: http://www.housingwire.com/articles/34862-about-time-cost-to-originate-mortgages-finally-gets-cheaper