GMAC to keep making home loans

GMAC's mortgage-lending unit will continue to make home loans after the company receives a promised $6 billion federal bailout.

"We will continue to originate mortgage products that can move in the secondary market," GMAC spokeswoman Gina Proia said in an e-mail, referring to a lender's ability to sell loans to securities investors.

"We are in a more stable position to conduct servicing operations."

Residential Capital, GMAC's home loan unit, wrote $46.3 billion in mortgages in the first nine months of 2008, making it the seventh-largest U.S. mortgage lender, according to Guy Cecala, publisher of Bethesda, Md.-based Inside Mortgage Finance.

ResCap is also the sixth-largest among U.S. mortgage servicers, which collect monthly payments from borrowers.

GMAC, the Detroit-based lender owned by General Motors Corp. and Cerberus Capital Management, ran short of cash after losing $7.9 billion over five quarters, mostly from defaults on subprime mortgages originated by ResCap. GMAC applied to become a bank holding company so it could gain access to the Treasury Department's Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Subprime mortgages were available to borrowers with damaged or incomplete credit histories.

The $6 billion in federal funding for GMAC is in addition to the $13.4 billion that the Treasury Department agreed this month to lend to GM and Chrysler, also a unit of Cerberus, a New York-based buyout firm.

"The auto side of the business is getting all the attention," Cecala said. "Their mortgage lending has been flying under the radar and they are probably happier that way. The strategy got them a government rescue."

Cerberus spokesman Jim Olecki did not immediately return calls for comment.

More than 100 mortgage companies have closed, been bought or suspended operations since the beginning of 2007, including Countrywide Financial Corp., the biggest U.S. mortgage lender last year.

"My question is this: If Countrywide had stayed around till now, would we be bailing it out?" said Joseph Mason, a securities professor at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge who previously worked at the Treasury's Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

"This is where we give back-door access to Treasury funds for private equity firms" such as Cerberus.

Reviving GM has become a priority for U.S. policy makers because of concern that a bankruptcy would deepen the year-old recession by putting millions of people out of work.

ResCap's $1.2 billion of 6.375 percent notes due in June 2010 rose 0.5 cents on the dollar, to 20.5 cents at 3 p.m. Minneapolis time, according to Trace, the bond-price reporting system of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. The debt yields 164 percent.

U.S. Rep. Scott Garrett, R-N.J., criticized the timing of the bailout, which was announced Monday night.

"It's par for the course for this administration, doing this in the dead of night," Garrett said.

"It's not good, nor is it acceptable that they aren't more forthcoming with the media or members of Congress about specifics on exactly what they're doing."