Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Why is your jumbo mortgage more expensive now?

If you wonder why jumbo mortgage rates for all borrowers have increased in recent months at major banks it's because we are in a real deal Holyfield CREDIT CRUNCH. No fooling around, every major financial institution around the world has had to go cap in hand to shareholders or international wealth funds for money. All the money that went into bad loans needs to be replenished and the cost of capital is going up for everyone. Classic supply and demand. As a mortgage banker we saw this meltdown coming years ago and created relationships with insurance companies, pension funds and small banks in order to provide jumbo mortgage financing outside the Wall St blood bath. After you call your bank give us a call you will be impressed if you have solid credit, income and have equity in your property.
from Marketwatch
Citi originally said Tuesday that it would raise $3 billion in a stock offering, but increased that amount by $1.5 billion after demand for the new shares exceeded its original offer. The banking giant said the offering priced at $25.27 per share, with the transaction totaling more than 178 million shares.
Citi shares fell 3.5% in pre-market trading Wednesday.
Citi said that the offering of new common stock, combined with the $6 billion it raised earlier this year selling preferred shares, would have left the company with a Tier 1 capital ratio of 8.6% at the end of March.
"We were pleased to increase the offering size to $4.5 billion in response to strong demand from a broad base of investors," Citi Chief Financial Officer Gary Crittenden said in a statement. "This optimizes our capital structure and further strengthens our balance sheet."

Citi has lost billions of dollars as the global credit crunch hammered the value of risky mortgage-related securities and leveraged loans held by the company. It tapped former hedge-fund manager Vikram Pandit to replace Charles Prince as chief executive last year and is selling some assets and businesses to cut leverage.
Citi also got a $7.5 billion investment from Abu Dhabi in November and said in January that it was raising $14.5 billion more from Singapore, Kuwait and other governments.
Analysts reacted coolly to the newest push to raise capital, saying Wednesday before the announcement of the increased offering, that they remain concerned that Citigroup did not go far enough with its $3 billion target.
"The fact that the company raised such a small amount of capital at this time confounds us," Oppenheimer analyst Meredith Whitney wrote in a research note Wednesday. "By our estimates, we believe Citi needs to raise an additional $10-$15 billion or sell several hundreds of billions worth of assets in order to truly shore up its capital position."
She cited "seriously constrained" earnings power and pressure on four of Citi's 10 core businesses as continuing problems for the bank.
Analysts said Citi may have come under the watchful eye of ratings agencies that are worried it does not have sufficient capital to weather future market disruptions. This means the banking giant will need to increase its reserves significantly over the next few months.
"It is our belief that one or more of the rating agencies did not feel comfortable with the firm's current capital mix and that is why the company offered the $3 billion in common stock," said William Tanona, an analyst for Goldman Sachs, in a note to investors.
"If our assumption is correct, it suggests that additional capital raises will likely also be in the form of common equity, which is most dilutive to shareholders [and] conversely, we view this as a positive for debt holders," Tanona said.
Concern remains on Wall Street that the company may still have large exposure to mortgage-related securities and other vulnerable assets.
Citi reported a $5.1 billion net loss earlier in April as it wrote down the value of soured mortgage investments and other credit-related positions by roughly $12 billion.