The Santa Fe, N.M., real estate investment trust and jumbo mortgage specialist Thornburg Mortgage Inc. has bought Adfitech Inc., one of the largest mortgage quality control outsourcers.
Thornburg announced its acquisition of the Edmond, Okla., company from the Dallas home builder Centex Corp. late Tuesday but did not say what it paid.
Adfitech also provides post-closing audits; document delivery, imaging, and storage services; due diligence and fraud investigations; and a variety of reviews — including early-payment-default, real-estate-owned, compliance, and predatory-lending ones. Thornburg has used it for three years.
“This acquisition supports our long-term goal to build a successful mortgage lending operation by expanding our operational capabilities to include an in-house capability that will support many of our back-office lending operations,” Larry Goldstone, Thornburg’s president and chief operating officer, said in a press release.
In an interview he said the launch of its wholesale channel this summer was a big impetus for the deal, because of Adfitech’s imaging expertise. He added that Thornburg also likes picking up a new type of revenue stream, and will seek to increase its outside business.
Adfitech has more than 400 quality control clients and does the work on about $2 billion to $2.5 billion in loans annually, he said.
This year Centex also sold its subprime lending unit, Centex Home Equity Co., to a private-equity fund run by Fortress Investment Group LLC. It has said it plans to remain in prime lending.
