Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) - 96th Annual Convention & Expo

San Diego, October 11-14, 2009

The MBA's 96th Annual Convention & Expo was a big success for Headstrong. Headstrong's mortgages processing subsidiary, Headstrong Business Services (HBS), had a booth at the Expo and sent a team of experts to cover the event. HBS specialists at the conference included Bill Decker, Judy Lysaght, Puneet Pushkarna, Barry Beville, Sojo Chen, Vishak Hemchand, Shayne Kahn, Hilary Langley, and Shiven Malhotra.

The HBS team connected with players from across the mortgages business, including national and regional lenders, mortgage companies, mortgage brokers, service providers, affordable housing groups and state and local association executives.

As attendees roamed the exhibit hall, HBS' executives provided guidance on market outlook, and outlined strategies to maximize revenue without commensurate increase in fixed costs. Discussions were held on how to leverage HBS' platform-based fulfillment services, software solutions and operations outsourcing offerings for reducing buybacks, increasing business, maximizing profits through a flexible cost model, and making it easier for investors to sell loans and validate quality control.

The HBS team interacted with teams from several institutions, including Citi Mortgage, First Funding USA, CarVal Investors, Johnson Bank, HSBC, Arch Bay, MGIC and Move.com. Our specialists offered details on HBS' business perspective, processes and technologies and shared their take on what breeds success in today's financial markets.

The conference is traditionally the mortgage industry's premier event, and brings together the Who's Who of the loan processing world. This year a multitude of top managers spoke on how to weather the storm and plan for growth in 2010. Session speakers included executives from the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, HUD and the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco. Discussions spoke of how changing borrower demographics, new products, lower origination volumes and new technologies have altered the roles of mortgage market investors, and in turn, forced business practices to evolve.

Based on the HBS team's analysis of the views offered by different experts, here are some of the key takeaways from the conference:

  • Broad economic growth should continue through the rest of 2009. Unemployment, however, is expected to climb to 10.2 percent by the middle of 2010 before beginning to moderate as the economy recovers.
  • Mortgage lending should begin to recover next year, industry leaders project. Modest increases in home sales should drive purchase originations, though refinance originations are expect to decline as mortgage rates rise. All told, mortgage originations should reach $1.5 trillion in 2010.
  • Purchase originations for this year are expected to amount to $718 billion, about 2 percent below the 2008 level of $731 billion. Next year, however, purchase originations should rise about 12 percent as existing home sales recover and home prices stabilize.
  • Refinance originations will end 2009 at $1.245 trillion, up about 60 percent from the $777 billion booked in 2008. Refinance activity will likely decrease in 2010 to about $745 billion as mortgage rates increase.
  • New home sales for 2009 will be down by about 18 percent relative to 2008, but the market seems poised to turn around next year. Economists believe that sales bottomed in the first quarter of 2009 and have been rebounding modestly since. For all of 2010, new home sales should post an increase of about 21 percent from 2009's very low levels, economists say.

For more information contact : product.management@headstrong.com