WASHINGTON—Carrington Mortgage Services is currently building a platform to serve the mortgage broker community, according to Steve Patton, the company's executive vice president for mortgage lending.
The Santa Ana, Calif.-based company has been expanding its retail mortgage lending capacity for the past 12 months and now it is about to jump into the wholesale space.
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.
Last month, Carrington received approval to issue Ginnie Mae single-family 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. It also helps grow our servicing platform.”
Carrington Mortgage Services is not a Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac seller/servicer and it has been selling its conventional loans to private investors.
