It provided market rate mortgages which it held in the branch’s own portfolio. (WaMu advertised that its “WM Mortgage Loans” were never sold). Your home is a place to live, raise your family- not an investment.
Whether it’s a MCM (Mid-Century Modern) or other, that’s the way it should be regarded, loved and cherished. And a good home mortgage, preferably locally held and serviced made all this possible for me and my clients. As did many other Seattle natives, I started with “School Savings” pictured as a mural on the wall of a branch.
WaMu and many other of the troubled banks and mortgage lenders got off on the wrong foot when they went after the derivative bundled mortgages that were in demand by big operative builders like Toll Brothers as covered in this very inclusive 10/16/05 NYT Magazine article- Chasing Ground.
I hope this comes through on
everyone’s computer better
than it does on mine. Jerry
I don’t have a lot of fond feelings about WaMU… I remember about 20 years ago, when I was in title insurance, doing a presentation with an agents team which a WaMU LO was also a part of, to investors…boy they loved the pick-a-payment option ARMs.
There’s so many times I’ve nearly closed my accounts with them because of Killengers comments about mortgage brokers too. Now it seems that Jamie Dimon is following in Killenger’s footsteps.
Rhonda- I guess all the good things changed about Washington Mutual when the name became WaMu and customers became “you guys”.
When the branch managers made the home loans and kept these in the branch, things were the way they should be- personal and friendly. Jerry
I think everything went downhill when they threw all the 5% passbook savings books in the trash 🙂
They were sucked into the greed train of easy money. To bad, they sounded like a great bank before that.
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As my above WaMu Post says- as far as I’m concerned, having the local Branch make the loan to its own customers and keeping said loan in house was a far better, more personal way to do things. As was my practice, early on I often checked out how much money we’d have to work with in doing the client’s new home project. Having the banker on the team was great! It’s time to get back to basics.
Jerry, you’ve just illustrated my point of what banks would like believe…consumers will blindly trust them. Having choices and competition is what keeps rates and costs down…having 2 or 3 banks for your mortgage selection will not be better for the consumer.
Rhonda, you’ve just illustrated my point. In the “good old days” architects doing custom homes (a distinct specialty then as now) considered it part of their responsibilities to help their clients through the myriad “choices and competition”. I do agree, this “is what keeps rates and costs down”.
The Washington Mutual story continues to play out in the courts with said slow death being duly reported in the local newspapers. Hopefully another equally useful institution will come along to take its place as far as helping me get my custom clients’ homes built. Jerry Gropp Architect AIA (see Link below)
http://knol.google.com/k/jerry-gropp-architect-aia/some-northwest-contemporary-family/246qxuxd260sm/135?pli=1#