Bank of America buys Countrywide Mortgage, so what?

Important announcement that Countrywide, who was in financial trouble due to this whole lending sub-prime mess, was purchased by Bank of America. So what? If you have a loan with Countrywide, your terms will not change. The only thing that will change is who you make your checks to and where you mail them.

The interesting thing to me is now Bank of America is alive and well in Columbus as a mortgage loan originator, but they have no local branches here. Columbus is too big to not have a BofA presence here, so I look for them to enter this market as a bank.

They could enter the market by building new branches all over town, or they could enter all at once by buying someone local and converting them. Hmmm, lets see who might be available. Well, JP Morgan/Chase (Bank One) is probably too big to swallow. However, there is a local bank here that just bought another bank, Sky Bank, and is having a real tough time getting it to stay down. See, Huntington bought Sky and claims they did not know that Sky Bank had so many bad loans, which now belong to Huntington. Huntington is taking on water fast and they are suffering severe losses. This is a perfect time for a huge bank, like BofA, to step in and buy them up as their stock price and value is way down.

Now, that will be interesting around here. Can you imagine the new ballpark will be Bank of America Park, or the Huntington Club seats will be the BofA seats. Of course, I made all this up, but stay tuned!