Stonegate Mortgage Acquires Warehouse Lender NattyMac

Stonegate Mortgage, Indianapolis, this week said it has purchased privately held warehouse provider, Natty Mac. Terms of the sale were not disclosed.

Prior to the acquisition, the St. Petersburg-based NattyMac was owned by Guggenheim Partners, a private financial services firm that has more than $160 billion in assets.

By purchasing NattyMac, Stonegate can cross market its third-party lending activities with warehouse lines. 

NattyMac never disclosed its warehouse volumes publicly, but according to an estimate made by National Mortgage News and the Quarterly Data Report, it had   commitments of at least $500 million.

“NattyMac has been providing warehouse financing to independent mortgage bankers since 2004 and unlike many of the bank owned warehouse lenders, they continued to do so during the credit crisis,” said Jim Cutillo, CEO of Stonegate. “We intend to ensure that the independent mortgage banker has access not only to warehouse financing, but liquidity for their agency loans.”

As part of the agreement, all 20 employees at NattyMac will join Stonegate, including chief operating officer John VanDolah.

Also, Stonegate will open a regional operations center in the NattyMac offices to handle additional wholesale and correspondent volume.

In March, Stonegate announced plans to expand its third party originations and servicing portfolio after it completed a private equity transaction with Long Ride Equity Partners.