OCMBC picks up Homestar for Ginnie ticket

OCMBC, an Irvine, California-headquartered mortgage banker, acquired Homestar Financial, which wound down operations last year.

Homestar is an approved Ginnie Mae issuer. OCMBC, while it is an originator of government products, did not have such capabilities, said Serene Vernon, the company's president, in an interview.

The third party originator was already doing business in almost every state, so those licenses weren't key to the deal.

"We are a Fannie seller and servicer [and a] Freddie seller and servicer; we also have an extremely large non-prime presence," Vernon said. "But what we don't currently have is a Ginnie ticket, that was the main goal in bringing the group on, as well as their expertise in servicing oversight."

OCMBC acquired a small servicing book with the deal. However, it is not planning to use the Homestar name as one of its brands. The transaction was an asset purchase and Homestar Financial will become "a child corporation" under the OCMBC umbrella, Vernon said.

Vernon added that OCMBC doesn't want to compete with the mortgage brokers and bankers that sell production to it. Rather than acquiring a large servicing operation, which would mean it would have to compete with those firms in order to defend the portfolio as mortgage rates come down, it was able to acquire Homestar with its Ginnie Mae approval.

A check of the National Multistate Licensing System showed Homestar had 64 active state licenses out of 85 total (many states require separate licenses for different mortgage industry activities); zero active branch locations and 158 inactive; and one sponsored mortgage loan officer. 

That is Wes Hunt, whose personal current NMLS listing has him as president and MLO of the company, which had been headquartered in Gainesville, Georgia.

"The market has been definitely interesting since Covid and no product or channel is great at every time," Vernon said. This deal makes OCMBC more rounded in what it can offer from its tool chest to support its mortgage broker and banker clients "as we enter this next market."

With rates starting to come down, and some of the conventional and government business return "we're excited to offer more tools" to its sellers, Vernon said.

Earlier this year, OCMBC was sued by Home Mortgage Acceptance Corp. over allegations of employee poaching and looking to capitalize on a trade name.

At the end of July, OCMBC filed its response to the suit along with a countersuit on behalf of the employee involved, Michael Turturro and his personal company Jet Alliance. HMAC has been using Jet Mortgage as a doing as business name for its wholesale business.