Mat Ishbia, UWM’s president and CEO, had made clear in May that he viewed the outcome as a win for UWM either way. Speaking to Mortgage Professional America at UWM Live in Pontiac, Michigan on May 14, he said what UWM found during due diligence changed the whole picture.
“I originally did a deal, thought I was buying a servicing book along with some expertise in capital markets, along with a servicing platform that was pretty good,” Ishbia told Mortgage Professional America. “When we did due diligence, we found out it was just a really great servicing book.”
What the deal means for the industry
CrossCountry Mortgage is the nation’s largest distributed retail mortgage lender, with more than 9,000 employees operating over 1,000 branches across all 50 states, DC, and Puerto Rico. Adding Two Harbors’ mortgage servicing rights portfolio significantly extends CCM’s balance sheet and servicing reach.
For UWM, what started as a plan to scale its in-house servicing operation ended without the asset it was chasing. Ishbia described the original goal plainly when speaking to MPA in May.
“We already have servicing in-house. It’s already here,” Ishbia said. “This was just to take our 700,000 clients and go up to 1.3 million. That was always just scale because our servicing platform is already the best in the country right now.”
