Short Takes: How Much Will RBS Pay the GSEs? / Citizens in the Hunt for LOs / Did Anyone Think the FHFA Was Going to Lower Loan Limits? / When in Rome…
In September, Royal Bank of Scotland spun off Citizens Financial Group, the U.S. banking operation it controlled. RBS, of course, is owned by the British government and is facing a likely multi-billion dollar settlement with the Federal Housing Finance Agency to cover all the shoddy non-agency MBS its Greenwich Capital unit sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. As the week closed, Citizens had a market cap of roughly $13 billion, which is what RBS may have to pay, give or take a couple billion dollars…
Meanwhile, we understand that Citizens has been aggressively recruiting residential mortgage loan officers, paying some nice signing bonuses…
The California Association of Realtors this week issued a statement commending the FHFA for keeping the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac loan limit unchanged at $417,000 for one-unit properties and at $625,500 for high-cost areas. The limit was actually raised in 46 counties as IMFnews reported Tuesday. California, as you might have guessed, has the highest home prices in the nation. But did anyone really think the FHFA was going to reduce the GSE loan limits? Really…
We know of a few jumbo mortgage executives who weren’t too thrilled with the loan caps increasing, but then again, some players in the jumbo market also have their Fannie/Freddie approvals. As the saying goes: if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.
