Wells Just Reported The Worst Mortgage Number Since The Financial Crisis
by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
Tue, 01/15/2019
When we reported Wells Fargo’s Q3 earnings back in October, we drew readers’ attention to one specific line of business, the one we have repeatedly dubbed the bank’s “bread and butter”, namely mortgage lending, and which as we then reported was “the biggest alarm” because “as a result of rising rates, Wells’ residential mortgage applications and pipelines both tumbled, sliding just shy of the post-crisis lows recorded in late 2013.”
Well, unfortunately for Wells, despite the sharp drop in yields in Q4 which many had expected would boost mortgage lending or at least refi activity for the bank that was until recently America’s largest mortgage lender, the decline in mortgage activity has continued, because buried deep in its presentation accompanying otherwise unremarkable Q4 results (modest EPS best; sizable revenue miss), Wells just reported that its ‘bread and butter’ is once again missing, and in Q4 2018 the amount in the all-important Wells Fargo Mortgage Application pipeline shrank again, dropping to $18 billion, the lowest level since the financial crisis.
Meanwhile, Wells’ mortgage originations number, which usually trails the pipeline by 3-4 quarters, was just as bad, dropping a whopping $12BN sequentially from $46 billion to just $38 billion, and effectively tied for the lowest print since the financial crisis. Putting this number in context, just six years ago, when the US housing market was actually solid, Wells was originating 4 times as many mortgages, or about $120 billion.
The Rest…HERE
