UMortgage, based in Philadelphia, has entered into a deal to acquire Dallas-based NXT Mortgage, along with its assets, technology, 35 loan officers, and its founder and president, Tyler Hodgson.
“I have had a close relationship with Tyler Hodgson, the CEO of NXT Mortgage, since he founded the company. Tyler is a very special entrepreneur, and has built a great company,” said UMortgage CEO and Founder Anthony Casa. “Tyler and I started discussing a merger this time last year, over the last couple months those conversations matured, and we both agreed that bringing NXT Mortgage to UMortgage would be the best move for both companies.”
Casa said he and Hodgson share a vision of building a one-of-a-kind platform for loan originators that will replace the distributed retail mortgage banking model as it is today.
“The model is broken,” Casa said, “and we are focused on disrupting the mortgage industry with a scalable platform that loan originators can best serve their customers. We have invested heavily in our technology to streamline the fulfillment process, allowing originators to spend less time in transaction management and more time focused on growing their business.”
Hodgson will own UMortgages shares and act as national sales leader, reporting to Todd Bitters, who was recently hired to replace Casa as chief sales officer of UMortgage. Casa posted on social media that he expects to own 1% of the company by January 2023, though he still retains voting rights, while the remaining 99% of shareholders will be UMortgage employees, including LOs, branch leaders, and other team members.
Corporate documents mandate that the CEO’s contract can never be longer than one year, meaning each year his employees will vote on whether they want the CEO to return.
“This is an added layer of accountability that aligns with the same expectations our loan originators are faced with when they have to compete for business every day and month; I feel very comfortable putting in the work and competing to be the CEO of this company,” Casa said.
UMortgage shareholders should be happy thus far with Casa’s work, considering the company was able to increase total loan volume over 600% during a tough year for the housing market, moving from $66,075,363 in 2021 to $491,624,822 so far in 2022, according to Market Mobility Intelligence (MMI). NXT’s loan officers should be able to bolster their volume even more; so far this year, NXT’s volume is $250,848,062, according to MMI.
“We have been on offense since Jan. 1, 2022, and have not let up one bit,” Casa said. “We made the decision to grow this year, and have done exactly that. Loan originators have been attracted to our value proposition and overall approach to building our business focused on relationships not transactions, which has led us to be one of the top spots for loan originators looking for an alternative to the outdated bloated retail mortgage banking model.”
A source familiar with the transaction told HousingWire that UMortgage is paying over $10 million in cash and equity to retain NXT’s loan officers. Casa declined commenting about this at this time.
