Carrington Mortgage Services has been expanding its retail mortgage lending capacity for the past 12 months and now it is about to jump into the wholesale space.
The Santa Ana, Calif.-based company is currently building a platform to serve the mortgage broker community, according to Steve Patton, Carrington's executive vice president for mortgage lending.
There are "a lot of folks leaving the wholesale space and not serving the brokerage community," Patton said in an interview.
"We think there is a lot of opportunity there to serve that market and originate a good percentage of business," he added.
Carrington was mostly known for being a servicing shop. But over the past year or more it has been building a retail branch network to originate conventional and jumbo loans, along with Federal Housing Administration and Department of Veterans Affairs guaranteed loans.
The retail franchise includes a call center in Orange County and 25 retail branches across the U.S. Carrington is licensed to originate loans in 36 states.
FHA Neighborhood Watch data show that the ambitious company originated nearly 1,000 FHA-insured loans over the past two years.
The private company does not disclose production numbers. But Patton noted that 85% of its originations are purchase money transactions at this point.
The retail branch network is closely connected with the real estate community.
Patton joined Carrington in May 2010, after working at Fremont Investment & Loan for 10 years as senior vice president. He also served at Security Pacific Bank and Bank of America.
Last week, Carrington said it received approval to issue Ginnie Mae single-family, government-guaranteed mortgage-backed securities.
The "real value" of being a Ginnie Mae issuer, Patton said, is it "helps us provide a wider range of products and more consistent delivery to consumers and our Realtor and broker partners."
Carrington is not a Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac seller/servicer and it has been selling its conventional loans to private investors.
Now Carrington can pool its government-guaranteed loans into Ginnie Mae single-issuer MBS and multi-issuer MBS.
"It also helps grow our servicing platform," Patton said.
