Angelo Mozilo Biography, Today, Wikipedia, Net Worth, Wiki, Obituary, House

Angelo Mozilo Biography, Today, Wikipedia, Net Worth, Wiki, Obituary, House -: Angelo Robert Mozilo, the founder of Countrywide Financial, died over the weekend from natural causes, according to his family. He was 84 years old.

Mozilo was a pioneer in the mortgage industry despite his reputation for being highly contentious. Regardless of how outsiders may perceive him, insiders recognize what a huge influence this man was, according to a LinkedIn post by his son Eric Mozilo. Over the course of his 50-year career, he dedicated his life to assisting millions of Americans in realising the American goal of homeownership. First and foremost, he strongly advocated for the representation of minorities.

Even now, no company even comes close to matching Countrywide’s size and dominance. Most of the top people in the mortgage industry today have connections to Angelo and Countrywide, whether they are employees, executives, or even business partners. He was also the best father a son could have.

The brash and endearing Mozilo, a native New Yorker and the Bronx-born son of a butcher co-founded Countrywide with his former mentor David Loeb in 1969 after graduating from Fordham University with a Bachelor of Science degree. For most of its history, Countrywide was known for creating low-risk loans. Mozilo led the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) from 1991 to 1992.

In 2000, Loeb retired, and he assumed total command of the company. He started working on it, and by 2004, it had eclipsed Washington Mutual and Wells Fargo to become the biggest mortgage lender in the nation. In 2006, Countrywide added nearly $10 billion in new loans each workweek. By the end of 2006, the company claimed that its five-year total return had been 340%, or ten times higher than the S&P 500.

In the late 1990s, Mozilo saw that Countywide was losing customers to competitors. As a result, Countywide adopted the subprime mortgage lending technique that would later contribute to the housing crisis in 2008. They did it on a large scale as well.

According to documents made available as part of government settlements, Mozilo was aware of the weak underwriting standards despite publicly defending the firm’s lending practices and positioning himself as an advocate for minority homeownership.

The only lender he deals with is Countrywide, according to the mortgage salesman I met on Sunday from a town near to Troy, Michigan. I was initially delighted by the news before he explained the situation. He claimed in a 2005 letter to a coworker at Countrywide that the area he serves is severely economically underprivileged and that the pay option ARM is the only way he can qualify his borrowers.

Mortgage brokers, who exploit the pay option for really marginal candidates in order to create volume and remuneration, have told me this story multiple times. We must own responsibility for our own conduct because we have no influence over how others behave, and we simply cannot and will not allow this pervasive behavior to hurt our organization.

When home values began to fall in 2006 and investors stopped purchasing mortgage-backed securities (MBS), the county began to run out of money. While Countrywide needed quick cash and was already the subject of investigations into its mortgage lending operations, Mozilo sold his company to Bank of America for $4 billion. The bank would have ultimately suffered a $50 billion loss on the deal.