Irvine-based Bankers Mutual has a new owner,its third in as many years,but this time around the mortgage lender is representing the West Coast in what’s planned to be a national expansion by its new parent.
Boston-based competitor Berkshire Mortgage Finance LP acquired Bankers Mutual for $40 million in cash in late June. With operations predominantly on the East Coast, Berkshire gains Bankers Mutual’s Orange County headquarters and offices in Northern California, the Seattle area and elsewhere. Bankers Mutual counts 90 employees total, 75 of them in OC.
“It creates a national platform,” said Banker’s Mutual President Bryan Frazier.
Both institutions make loans for multifamily and affordable housing projects. With a servicing portfolio of $7 billion, Berkshire Mortgage is twice as large as Bankers Mutual. Bankers Mutual has a $3.5 billion servicing portfolio and last year it originated $663 million in loans. Berkshire Mortgage counts 170 employees.
Bankers Mutual, which has offices in Santa Clara, Walnut Creek, Bellevue, Wash., and eight more cities nationwide, will assume the Berkshire Mortgage name starting in 2001.
The transaction marks the third acquisition of Bankers Mutual since 1998. Paul Neff, who specialized in residential financing, started the lender in 1980. In 1998, Neff sold Bankers Mutual to Century City-based Franchise Mortgage Acceptance Co. Franchise Mortgage acquired the lender because it wanted to broaden its scope and get into other areas of finance. But it did not work out, Frazier said.
In November of last year, San Mateo-based Bay View Capital Corp. bought Franchise Mortgage, which makes loans to franchise operations such as gas stations and retail stores.
“Bay View pursued FMAC for their primary lending business. We (Bankers Mutual) went along with the sale,” Frazier said.
Frazier said the lender’s operations were restricted as part of publicly traded Bay View. Now, under the umbrella of the privately held Berkshire Mortgage, Bankers Mutual is exempt from some of the regulatory restrictions it faced at Bay View, he said.
Bankers Mutual expects to originate more than $1 billion in loans this year, said Michelle Nachreiner, a company spokeswoman.
“The market is working in our favor. Rates are very favorable,” she said. n
