by Debbie F. Longo
Everyone knows that the home loan market is in a mess, but there are still plenty of lenders who are lending.
Many local banks never got involved in the credit crunch and are actively originating loans. This is not startling. The origin of the mortgage business was small, regionally focused “building societies”, who took in deposits from local depositors to lend out to local homebuyers. These banks ar perhaps no longer be called by the same name, but they are doing the same thing, staying local, and this has insulated them from many problems.
They are still able to not only make home loans available, but are even expanding their mortgage portfolios to fill some of the gap created by the big players who have been forced out of the market because of rapid expansion in poor loans.
The large, stamdard banks are cutting back on loans across the board, but local, community based banks are predicting continued stability in their loans, although with not much growth.
These financial institutions, which include development banks and credit unions and may even be non-profit entities, have been very successful lending to poor risk borrowers because they stay involved with the customer. These companies are not only remaining in business, they are making a profit on their loans.
A good example is Shorebank of Chicago, a $2.3billion asset bank which serves the low income community of this city and, in contrast to the national average of delinquencies of 18.7%, has only 3.1%. Since they are working with sub prime customers, their rates are higher, and they are extremely careful about how they manage their portfolio. They strive to be profitable, just not “profit maximizing” according to Mark Pinsky, CEO of Opportunity Finance Network, an umbrella entity for community development finance institutions. If we take profit maximizing as a euphemism for greedy, then this may be one of the main points that separates these banks from the national giants that are on the ropes now.
A case in point: Angelo Mozilo, the CEO of troubled Countrywide Financial, received a salary in 2007 of $22.1million, while Douglas Bystry, CEO of Clearinghouse CDFI had a salary of $190,000. Besides salaries, another example might be business decisions; Shorebank has its headquarters in a renovated building, not a new corporate high rise.
This breed of sub prime lenders are committed to the locale and so to the loans they make, and instead of merely originating the loans and reselling as most major lenders do, they use initiatives that help insure the loans will be paid. Shorebank, for example, runs an energy conservation program since they realize that the home loan is more likely to be paid if the homeowner can afford to pay his electric or heating bill.