Despite the pesky Fed -- which has rattled off 15 rate hikes over the past two years -- the mortgage business is still chugging along. Leading lender Countrywide Financial (NYSE:CFC) reported funding $40 billion in mortgages last month. That's a 10% improvement over the company's production in March of 2005.
Even though the Fed doesn't impact the conventional long-term mortgage market directly, it would be naive to assume that consistent upticks on the short end of the borrowing spectrum won't have an impact on the longer end.
Consumers seem to believe that the future of mortgage rates will be higher, and that affected Countrywide's adjustable rate mortgage business last month, pulling it down 2% (although it had been ticking higher until this point). That does fly in the face of the 22% spurt in its home equity loan funding.
Baffled that the mortgage business continues to grow despite everyone tossing around the phrase "real estate bubble" like beads at a Mardi Gras parade? It's not a matter of the market flushing away conventional wisdom. It's just that things rarely go as planned.
Even though some red-hot housing markets remain highly susceptible for a tumble, folks are still finding plenty of reasons to take out a new home loan. That's obviously good news for Countrywide, but it's also welcome news for real estate developers like D.R. Horton (NYSE:DHI), Pulte (NYSE:PHM), and Centex (NYSE:CTX).
The news is also good for some unlikely players like H&R Block (NYSE:HRB). Three years ago, I joked that "H&R" stood for Home and Refinancing -- this was after the tax preparation giant was smoothing over its lumpy seasonality with major inroads into the mortgage origination business.
Naturally, there's no guarantee that Countrywide will keep inching higher. April should also be healthy, given the company's pipeline, but keep an eye on how the backlog stands after that. The climate can change in a hurry. Until then, take it easy on using the "real estate bubble" phrase. Those beads get pretty heavy after awhile.
Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz is looking to pay off his mortgage later this year, and it's probably not in order to take on a new one. He does not own shares in any company mentioned in this story. The Fool has a disclosure policy. Rick is a member of the Rule Breakers analytical team, seeking out tomorrow's great growth stocks today.
