Bank of America's Countrywide Bet May Bolster Mortgage Market

Bank of United States Corp. bought $2 billion of preferable stock from Countrywide Financial Corp. to stabilise the nation's biggest mortgage loaner as radioactive dust from the U.S. lodging slack paralyzes recognition marketplaces worldwide.

``Countrywide is no longer on the endangered company list,'' Hood Ziegel & Co. analyst Dick Bove wrote in a short letter to clients yesterday. ``This investing do sense for both companies. Depository Financial Institution of United States will now presumably be the preferable loaner to Countrywide.''

Depository Financial Institution of America, the second-biggest U.S. bank, acquires shares that output 7.25 percentage and can be converted into common stock at a terms of $18, Calabasas, California-based Countrywide said yesterday in a statement. Countrywide shares climbed 21 percentage in drawn-out trading followers the announcement.

While Countrywide acquires hard cash needed to maintain making loans, the extract also may assist to reassure investors that the mortgage marketplace is safe after rising default rates sparked a planetary recognition crunch and forced the U.S. Federal Soldier Modesty to cut adoption costs for banks. The Fed's Aug. Seventeen move, designed to direct more than hard cash to companies starved for short-term financing, came a twenty-four hours after Countrywide tapped $11.5 billion of exigency recognition lines.

``With last week's Federal action and today's announcement, it looks that the mortgage working capital marketplaces will go back to more than normal degrees of activity and liquidness sooner than we thought,'' Fox-Pitt Kelton Inc. analyst Leslie Howard Shapiro wrote in a short letter to investors yesterday.

The proclamation sent Countrywide shares to $26.33 as of 7:07 p.m. yesterday, after they gained 3 cents to $21.82 in New House Of York Stock Exchange composite trading. Countrywide had dropped 49 percentage for the year, including the diminution that followed the Aug. Fifteen Merrill Lynch & Co. study predicting the company's hard cash deficit might coerce it into bankruptcy.

Off the List

Converting the preferable stock would give Depository Financial Institution of United States 111 million common shares, or a 16 percentage interest in Countrywide, Bove estimated. The dealing will be ``additive'' to Depository Financial Institution of America's earnings, he said.

``We were able to travel to California, expression at their trading operations and their books,'' said Henry Martin Robert Stickler, a spokesman for Charlotte, North Carolina-based Depository Financial Institution of America. ``We determined the value is greater than what the marketplace was giving them recognition for.''

The ballot of assurance sent shares of mortgage loaners up in after-hours trading. Thornburg Mortgage Inc. gained as much as 10 percent, IndyMac Bancorp added 7 percentage and American Capital Mutual Inc. advanced about 2.5 percent. Accredited Home Lenders Retention Co., which slashed 1,600 occupations yesterday in an attempt to sit out the mortgage meltdown, rose almost 9 percent.

Worth Less

Countrywide, which made $421.1 billion of loans last year, have struggled to maintain its terms after investors stopped buying mortgages and short-term debt investors refused to refinance its commercial paper.

The company may necessitate to raise more than working capital because falling terms for place loans inch the secondary market, where they're bought and sold by Wall Street traders, have got pared the value of its mortgage portfolio, according to Sean Egan, managing manager of Egan-Jones Ratings Co. in Haverford, Pennsylvania.

The assets are probably deserving ``less than its outstanding obligations,'' he said.

In January, Countrywide shares were buoyed by guess that it might be acquired by Depository Financial Institution of America. The stock tumbled after Depository Financial Institution of United States Head Executive Military Officer Kenneth Jerry Lee Lewis said he had reserves about the pattern of loaning through mortgage brokers, as Countrywide does.

``We like the product, but we don't like the business,'' Jerry Lee Lewis said Jan. 31. Six calendar months later, in a June 19 interview, he said the lag in place gross sales was ``just about over'' and predicted that the economic system would pick up in the 2nd one-half of this year.

Back to Normal

In yesterday's statement, Jerry Lee Lewis said Depository Financial Institution of America's investing in Countrywide ``will be a measure toward a tax return to more than normal liquidness in the mortgage markets.''

Countrywide chief executive officer Angelo Mozilo said the bank's investing ``strengthens our balance sheet, enabling us to place Countrywide for future growth.''

Depository Financial Institution of United States won't acquire any Countrywide board seating in connexion with its investment, Stickler said.

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., the greatest investment banker of U.S. chemical bonds backed by mortgages, announced yesterday that it will fold its subprime-lending unit and fire 1,200 employees. Accredited Home announced 1,600 occupation cuts, and HSBC Holdings Plc said it would get rid of 600 occupations in the U.S. and stopping point a mortgage business office in Indiana.

To reach the newsman on this story: Thomas Bradley Keoun in New House Of York at
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Deal for mortgage raises questions

Herbert A. Freeman said when he bought his double-wide manufactured home in 2001, the seller asked a favor.

For $5,000, the seller — Dennis D. Williams — wanted to use Freeman’s name and credit to also buy himself a home.

Freeman, a school custodian, agreed. He signed a $420,750 mortgage in his own name for Williams’ house.

The transaction is one of dozens of questionable deals tied to the troubled neighborhood of Windy Pines South.

At the time, Williams was president of Fintech Homes, a company that sold land-home packages in the subdivision south of Hope Mills. Freeman came to Williams about buying one of the double-wides.

Williams wanted to purchase a luxury home in the Buckhead neighborhood, off Raeford Road, Freeman said. He offered Freeman the $5,000 if he would buy it for him, with an agreement that Williams would make all the payments and pay the taxes, Freeman said.

Deeds show the transaction took place October 2001. Freeman obtained the loan to buy the house at 604 Humboldt Place. Freeman’s name is also on the sales deed as the purchaser.

The closing attorney, Andre Barrett, has since been sentenced to prison for unrelated real estate fraud. Barrett did many of the other closings in Windy Pines South, where homeowners found problems with their mortgages and ended up in foreclosure.

A week after the transaction, deeds show, Freeman got his own home in Windy Pines South with a mortgage of $89,200. Barrett closed that deal, too.

Although loan applications are supposed to list a borrower’s financial obligations, Freeman’s application for his own home makes no mention of the $420,750 loan, which would have carried monthly payments of $3,770, according to paperwork. Freeman said he earned no more than $2,800 per month as head custodian at Gray’s Creek Elementary School and with other part-time jobs.

Williams declined to answer questions about the deal.

But real estate records indicate Williams probably had credit problems. Deeds show a bank had begun foreclosure proceedings against Williams and his wife on a $345,000 home in the Kingsford subdivision that they bought in August 1999. Their mortgage — with adjustable interest that started at 12.75 percent and would go up after three years — was the same type of costly loan that sunk many homeowners in Windy Pines South.

The Williamses’ loan also carried a prepayment penalty, which meant the bank could charge fees if they sold the home before the interest rate went up.

Freeman, 54, said he had good credit. The Buckhead mortgage — in Freeman’s name — appeared to have good terms: no adjustable interest, no penalties.

Freeman liked Williams. When Freeman fell behind with his own payments in Windy Pines South — the $600 mortgage kept going up, like everyone else’s in the neighborhood — Williams gave him $6,000 to catch up, Freeman said.

“I went to Dennis, and he gave me the money to get current,” Freeman said. “I’m thinking everything is OK.”

In June 2003, deeds show Freeman extended to Williams an option to buy the Buckhead home. Freeman gave Williams power of attorney to deal with Equibanc Mortgage regarding payments and balances.

In December 2005, a deed shows, Freeman sold the property to Williams for $500,000. Freeman said no money changed hands. The home, with a swimming pool, remains in the Williamses’ name.

Freeman wasn’t so lucky. He fell behind again. The bank eventually foreclosed. He lost his home when the bank auctioned it in August 2004.

He was devastated.

“To me, it was the most embarrassing thing I ever had to do,” Freeman said. “I stayed over there a while and I got to know the people and stuff, and then when my foreclosure came, I had to move out.”

More than two years later, he’s still paying off bankruptcy debts. He rents an apartment near Bonnie Doone, off Bragg Boulevard.

“It was a waste of my time, and a dream of a home went down the tubes,” Freeman said.
Staff writer Matt Leclercq can be reached at leclercq@fayobserver.com or 486-3551.