How Banks Profit From Mortgages – Alts.co (2024)

Have you ever wondered where the interest in your savings account comes from? Or why do banks give you money to switch?

Of course, any reasonable business wants to operate with the aim of making a profit, and banks are no different. So how do they make money? The interest earned from your bank is never a significant amount, could companies like Bacon Coin could be an alternative.

How Banks Profit From Mortgages – Alts.co (1)

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How do banks make money from real estate?

To make money and retain or grow their market share, banks need to sell profitable products. Banks sell financial products such as mortgages, loans, savings accounts and credit cards.

For banks to make a profit, they loan out money at a higher rate than they pay into your savings account. E.g. They may charge an interest rate of 3% on mortgages and pay 0.1% interest on savings accounts, leaving them with 2.9% as profit.

The bank can make money from mortgages in many ways such as:

  • Origination fees
  • Net Interest Income
  • Mortgage-Backed Securities
  • Loan servicing
How Banks Profit From Mortgages – Alts.co (2)

Origination Fee

Since banks use their funds when offering mortgages, they typically charge an origination fee of 0.5% to 1%, which is due with mortgage payments. This is an upfront fee charged by the lender to process a new loan application and is compensation for executing the loan. It increases the overall interest rate paid on a mortgage.

Net Interest Income

One of the main ways banks make money is through Net Interest Income. Every bank takes and holds customers deposits and then lends a proportion of these deposits out to customers, as loans, overdrafts, mortgages and other products. The net interest income is the excess interest generated from lending to customers.

Mortgage-Backed Securities

How are banks able to keep issuing mortgages without running out of money?

That’s right, they sell your loans.

They package mortgages together as mortgage-backed securities and sell them to pension funds, insurance companies, and other institutional investors who buy them for long-term income. This generates more income and allows the bank to issue additional mortgages.

Loan Servicing

Banks can continue to earn revenue by servicing the loans contained in the Mortgage-Backed Securities they sold. If the purchasers are unable to process mortgage payments and handle administrative tasks involved with loan servicing, the bank can do this for them in exchange for a small percentage of the mortgage value.

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How Banks Profit From Mortgages – Alts.co (3)

Stefan von Imhof

Stefan von Imhof is the co-founder and CEO of Alts.co.With a background in alternative asset analysis, valuations, and due diligence, Stefan was born for this world. His alternative investing newsletter has grown into Alts.co — the world's largest alt investing community, with over 230,000 investors.Originally from Boston and later Santa Barbara, CA, he now lives in Melbourne, Australia with his beautiful wife.

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FAQs

How do banks make money from mortgages? ›

Banks can make money by writing a mortgage and then collecting the interest on it for years. But they can make even more by issuing a mortgage, selling it (and earning a commission), and then writing new mortgages, and then selling them.

How do banks make money from interest and ______________? ›

They earn interest on the securities they hold. They earn fees for customer services, such as checking accounts, financial counseling, loan servicing and the sales of other financial products (e.g., insurance and mutual funds).

How does mortgage companies make a profit? ›

Mortgage lenders can make money in a variety of ways, including origination fees, yield spread premiums, discount points, closing costs, mortgage-backed securities (MBS), and loan servicing. Closing costs fees that lenders may make money from include application, processing, underwriting, loan lock, and other fees.

How do banks make most of their profits? ›

Interest income is the primary way that most commercial banks make money. As mentioned earlier, it is completed by taking money from depositors who do not need their money now.

How much money do banks make from mortgages? ›

For banks to make a profit, they loan out money at a higher rate than they pay into your savings account. E.g. They may charge an interest rate of 3% on mortgages and pay 0.1% interest on savings accounts, leaving them with 2.9% as profit. The bank can make money from mortgages in many ways such as: Origination fees.

Do banks lose money on mortgages? ›

Lenders lose money on a loan when it's more expensive to produce the loan than the revenue it generates. To combat these losses, lenders started shedding personnel and lowering their origination costs.

What are three ways banks make money? ›

There are _____ main ways banks make money: by charging interest on money that they lend, by charging fees for services they provide and by trading financial instruments in the financial markets.

Do banks create money when they make loans? ›

Banks create money when they lend the rest of the money depositors give them. This money can be used to purchase goods and services and can find its way back into the banking system as a deposit in another bank, which then can lend a fraction of it.

How do banks make money off of the credit they issue? ›

The primary way that banks make money is interest from credit card accounts. When a cardholder fails to repay their entire balance in a given month, interest fees are charged to the account.

Do banks sell mortgages for profit? ›

It's common practice to sell mortgages so that lenders can get more money to help finance additional mortgages. The process is cyclical and continues from there.

What do banks do with mortgages? ›

Lenders sell mortgages so they have money to lend to other borrowers. Some sell loans to other financial institutions but keep the servicing rights. In this case, the customer deals with the same lender and sends the payments to the same place. It hardly affects consumers, since the point of contact doesn't change.

How do banks make money selling mortgages to other banks? ›

So, mortgage banks have to sell every loan they fund to “investors” on the secondary mortgage market for “a premium” (e.g. selling a $500,000 loan for $510,000), and that is also how they make most of their money.

How did banks make money on mortgage backed securities? ›

The bank often gets fees from the borrower at the time the loan is made. On top of that, the bank sells the loans on to the investment bank at a higher price than what the bank lent out.

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