Snohomish County Mortgage Lending Report for February 2010

Since the last lender report in January 2009, the national lenders, Wells Fargo and Bank of America, have further increased their market share over local and less well recognized lenders. Wells Fargo and Bank of America issued 43% of all the loans in Snohomish County last month and with the next closest lender, JP Morgan Chase Bank, only issuing 6.7% of loans. A substantial divide but is it just because these companies are larger national brands or is there more to it?

Yes, I do believe brand recognition plays a vital big role in sales volume but another aspect is these two brands have a lot of toxic assets to liquidate. Originating loans and having a lot of properties to sell is directly related to an emerging real estate trend – in order to submit a purchase and sale agreement on one of their properties, a buyer must first be pre-approved by the bank holding the property. In all the bank owned purchases I’ve represented clients in, the buyer was required to provide an pre-approval letter from that bank 100% of the time – no doubt frustrating buyers. This leads me to believe that some buyers where and are willing to use these larger banks because buyers perceived it may make financing the property easier. I am not a fan of this emerging trend and fortunately buyers are not required to use that lender.

Also, in January 2009, Wells Fargo held the #1 spot with 174 loans originated and 13 months later that figure has increased 164% to 289. Then in the same time period, Bank of America has shown a 300% increase in loans originated and moving up from the 8th ranked spot to the 2nd. Coincidence? I think not.

Another significant insight is the decline of the originated loans by the smaller to medium sized lender business segment. The average number of loans originated in January 2009 for the subsequent twenty eight lenders was 48 and in February 2010 the number has adjusted to 23. I won’t speculate as to the reason for the decline but I do know that the smaller lenders, like Frontier Bank, do not require buyers to be pre-approved through their institution to submit an offer on their properties – though this may change in the future.

Top 30 Lenders in Snohomish County

Top 10 Refinance Lenders in Snohomish County

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