Impac Selling AmeriHome Unit

Impac Mortgage Holdings Inc. is selling AmeriHome Mortgage Corp. to an undisclosed buyer.

Included in the sale is a $700 million mortgage servicing rights portfolio. Impac is retaining all its Excel Mortgage Inc. assets. Excel does business as Impac Mortgage.

Compensation will be at a significant amount above AmeriHome’s book value, says William Ashmore, Impac’s president. He declined to disclose any other information.

The sale will help Impac improve near-term cash balances and profitability. The proceeds will allow it to build the servicing portfolio at Excel.

Impac lost $5 million in the third quarter, $4 million of it attributable to the originations business where the company suffered from gain-on-sale margin compression.

During its second-quarter conference call, Impac said it was examining options for AmeriHome. Impac acquired a controlling interest in AmeriHome in 2011 to help it get back into the lending business because of approvals as a Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac/Ginnie Mae seller/servicer. Subsequently, Excel has obtained those same approvals.

As a result, now Impac Mortgage Holdings owns two separate platforms with common management. It decided a change of control for one of those platforms was needed given the operational challenges, says Ashmore.

Impac acquired the last 20% of AmeriHome it lacked ownership of in July, paying more than $1 million in stock and $350,000 in cash, according to its third-quarter 10-Q filing.

Excel’s originations should be in the area of $2.7 billion for this year and its servicing portfolio will be at $2.5 billion by yearend. The total does not include AmeriHome’s MSRs, Ashmore adds. Impac Mortgage is originating over $500 million in Ginnie Mae, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans each quarter.