Why do the banks keep selling my loans?
You know the situation: A notice arrives from your mortgage company saying they are selling your loan to another company. Why does this happen?
There are two very good reasons for them to sell your loan.
First: They need to keep a large enough pool of money on hand to make loans to other people. For example: If they lent out $50 million dollars over a period of 10 years they would need to have started out with a half a million dollars of cash. How will they keep on lending? (Most mortgages are for 30 years, effectively tying up that money for this amount of time.)
Second: They make more money this way. Mortgage bankers make a commission when they sell your loan to another company.
Consider this: If a banker makes a "point" on a package of loans worth a million dollars, he (or she) makes $10,000 dollars (1% of $1,000,000) in immediate profit by selling them. The banker then has freed up one million dollars which he can re-loan to other customers (earning "points" on the new loans as well. But let's not get distracted by that.) If he writes $1,000,000 in new loans this month, he can make another $10,000 dollars in points by selling those next month.
So, if $1,000,000 worth of loans are sold each month, the banker would net $120,000 for the year on those points alone. Compare this to holding on to the loans. If he keeps that same $1,000,000 in loans and earned interest at say 8%, he would earn $80,000 in a year on that same million. It becomes clear that selling loans is more profitable.
Selling off the loans every month:
12 x ($1,000,000 x .01) = $120,000
Keeping the loans and collecting the interest paid:
$1,000,000 x .08 = $ 80,000
To whom do the mortgage companies sell these loans? They are sold on the secondary market, which mainly consists of two organizations, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The secondary market is the place where mortgages are bought and sold by various investors. Secondary market investors include Fannie Mae, Freddie, various pension funds, insurance companies, securities dealers, and other financial institutions. All of the loans sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac must meet certain guidelines for credit worthiness and repayment likelihoods.
The secondary mortgage market exists as a source of money for banks to lend out to home buyers in every state. This is done in two ways:
- Pay cash for mortgages purchased from lenders and hold those mortgages in Fannie Mae's investment portfolio. The lenders, in turn can use that money to make more mortgages for more home buyers.
- The secondary market issues what are known as Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS) in exchange for pools of mortgages from lenders. These MBSs provide the lenders with a more liquid asset to hold or sell. MBSs are highly liquid investments and are traded on Wall Street through securities dealers.
Do you have a question we haven't answered? Call us! E-mail us! or Buy the Book!
Document last modified Monday, 21-Jun-2004 18:04:47 EDT
|
