Bank of America spent $1.5 billion on legal fees in the last three months of 2010. Sometimes we have trouble imagining big numbers. In the US, our median household pretax income is about $50,000. If a household were to work for 300,000 years, it would earn $1.5 billion dollars. (300,000 years ago was about the same time that mortgage bankers began walking erect, and using burnt sticks to write HMDA information on cave walls.)

There are indeed jobs out there to be had. Merscorp Inc., the parent company of Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS) announced that R.K. Arnold has retired as CEO & president, and Paul Bognanno will take the job on an interim basis. He will lead the search process for a permanent replacement in MERS’ Reston, VA office. MERS, as we know, has in its electronic database more than half of all the outstanding residential mortgages in the U.S., and is owned by the largest lenders and investors in the country.

Pacific Union Financial, a multi-state direct lender with both wholesale and retail platforms, is looking for personnel. (Pacific Union is GNMA approved, and today will begin accepting FHA applications for borrowers with FICO scores from 600-640 in addition to accepting borrower applications down to 580 at the retail level with some overlays. President Evan Stone said, “We are very excited to serve a segment of the marketplace that has been almost completely disregarded by large institutional investors. Our HUD Neighborhood Watch compare ratio is 25%, which represents our commitment to funding quality loans…”) The company is looking for DE underwriters, retail loan originators (including branches), servicing personnel, and wholesale account executives for their Walnut Creek and Santa Ana offices. “For any of the aforementioned positions, please email Vicki Bonardi at [email protected] 

Terra Mortgage Banking (an affiliate of Opes Advisors, a privately held regional financial services firm) is searching for “in-house” real estate branch-based loan officers north of San Francisco, CA.   Candidates must be proficient in purchase lending & NMLS licensed. Interested parties should contact Chris Solle by e-mailing: [email protected]. Another affiliate of Opes,Landmark Mortgage Group, is currently searching for a branch manager to run a new branch in the San Francisco area. “The ideal candidate is someone that wants to continue originating while supplementing their income with branch production overrides.” Inquiries should be sent to [email protected].
Kinecta Federal Credit Union continues to look is looking for seasoned Wholesale Account Executives in certain areas west of the Rockies. If you are interested, please send a resume to Erika Schlarmann at [email protected].

A while back the MBA wrote to Federal regulators, asking for either clarification of the existing verbiage, or an extension past the 4/1 date for originator compensation changes. They responded. (Call me an internet amateur, but going to the MBA’s website and typing “compensation” in the search engine reveals an MBA workshop but not the responses; I am sure that the regulator’s answers are on there somewhere, I just could not find them.) SunTrust, however, has sent the regulator’s answers out to their broker clients. They are quite lengthy, but I will be reproducing them in blocks for the next week, starting tomorrow.

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