If every cloud has a silver lining, then at least last year’s prolonged low interest rate environment boosted residential purchases and buoyed refinance business at Connecticut’s banks.
That’s chief among the observations that jump out from 2014’s list of Top Lenders, compiled using data collected by The Warren Group, publisher of The Commercial Record. Residential purchases last year climbed across all categories of lenders, but those increases were more dramatic at credit unions than at banks.
Wells Fargo maintained its top status in the residential purchase category among banks last year, originating 1,184 loans totaling around $503.2 million. In 2013, it made 876 loans worth $265.8 million, for a year-over-year increase of about 89 percent in volume.
But contrast that with American Eagle Federal Credit Union, the top credit union lender in that category, which originated 305 loans worth $68.2 million. Granted, that’s only a fraction of the volume Wells Fargo did, but that still represents an increase of nearly 183 percent in loan volume over the 110 loans totaling $24.1 million it made in 2013.
But frankly, that’s about what you’d expect to see, said David Zamary, president of the Connecticut Mortgage Bankers Association and the head of residential lending at Stamford-based First County Bank. Quite simply put, credit union members are very loyal – and credit unions can often offer a better rate than a competing bank.
Zamary noted that mortgage companies have also been competing on rates.
“A lot of our borrowers are applying to two lenders, a bank and a mortgage company,” he said. “A lot of these are rate shoppers, even with rates as low as they are.”
Still, Zamary is hopeful that lower minimum credit scores and smaller down-payments through Freddie or Fannie will help boost activity among first-time homebuyers this year, and he also anticipates the jumbo market will pick up speed in 2015.
“I think last year was a good year, but a tough year, too,” Zamary said. “Everyone’s expecting 2015 to be a good year. The purchase market is real strong. It started to pick up in February, even with this winter. People were pent up in the house, and they just wanted to get out.”

CRE Lending Down
But for as strong as the residential market was last year, commercial real estate lending apparently did not similarly benefit. In the commercial and retail mortgage category, Webster Bank held onto its No. 1 status by number of loans, booking 106 loans totaling $66.3 million. In 2013, Webster made 152 loans totaling $95.2 million. Bridgeport-based People’s United Bank topped the list by volume, making 104 loans totaling $173.8 million, compared with the 104 loans worth $166.9 million in 2013.
That pattern repeats itself among credit unions and mortgage companies, too, and across all lender categories for industrial and manufacturing mortgages and may well bolster the oft-repeated claim that the Nutmeg State is just unfriendly to businesses.
After all, commercial real estate contacts last year complained to the Federal Reserve of slow activity swaths of vacant office space in downtown Hartford, according to several iterations of the Fed’s Beige Book report.
But Connecticut’s commercial real estate may yet have a few sunny days ahead this year. According to the Fed’s latest Beige Book, released in March this year, contacts reported that even the harsh winter didn’t seem to tamp down activity in the commercial real estate sector. 

Email: lalix@thewarrengroup.com

See List of Top Lenders Here