Virginia-based City Lending shuts down

A Virginia-based retail lender which generated hundreds of millions of dollars of origination volume annually since 2022 has shuttered. 

City Lending CEO Jorge Campodonico shared the news Wednesday on LinkedIn, and the company's website this week stated it was no longer conducting business. The independent mortgage bank reported $446 million in origination volume in 2024, according to the latest Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data available from the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council.

Campodonico is an industry veteran who has been City Lending's CEO since the business was founded in 2013. In an email to National Mortgage News Friday, he said the company wound down operations after reassessing an evolving regulatory environment and continued market consolidation. 

"It was a deliberate decision based on the realities facing independent mortgage lenders today," he wrote. "While it's never easy to close a company you've built, I believe it was the responsible course of action given the circumstances."

No Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notifications regarding the firm were filed in Virginia. 

The company had over a dozen branches across the country, concentrated in Virginia, according to Nationwide Multistate Licensing System records. City Lending was licensed to originate in 29 states, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. and per HMDA records reported nine-figure origination volume in seven of the past eight years.

The CEO said in his post that the organization had over 220 employees. 

Another IMB closes its doors

While the number of total originators nationwide ebbs and flows annually, few larger shops with volume similar to City Lending have shut down in the last few years. 

When mortgage rates began their climb to over 6% in 2022, the industry laid off thousands of professionals and several IMBs filed for bankruptcy. That includes non-qualified mortgage shops First Guaranty Mortgage Corp. and Sprout Mortgage, the latter having endured a difficult bankruptcy process. Reverse Mortgage Funding also filed for bankruptcy later that year. 

The collateral damage continued in the following years as rates didn't let up. Homestar Financial shut down in late 2023, while Hometown Lenders collapsed in 2024, leaving creditors seeking almost $49 million in unsecured claims that continue today.

Other lenders have been absorbed by competitors. Home Point Financial, citing industry economics, offloaded its wholesale channel to The Loan Store in 2023 and sold the rest of its business to Mr. Cooper.