RESIDENTIAL
Irvine’s Impac Mortgage Holdings Inc. is starting to shed some light on the big changes it is making to its ever evolving corporate strategy, even as it was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange late last week.
Two years ago, Impac was one of the country’s largest investors in home loans to people with less-than-perfect credit.
In October, the company said it was getting ready to start some new businesses. The most prominent: a service to help banks dispose of their growing ranks of foreclosed homes.
The business lines,driven by the collapse of the mortgage market during the past year and a half,is part of Impac’s decision to focus on real estate and mortgage services and asset management, rather than loans.
The company’s updated Web site shows some of the real estate investment trust’s new endeavors, including an escrow services business, a financial consulting business for banks and regulatory bodies and a mortgage servicing business.
Also new to the company’s Web site: a business listing with nearly 1,300 foreclosed houses Impac owns and is looking to sell.
The site, run under the Impac Real Estate Services name, includes about 600 foreclosed homes in California for sale. Some 30 of them are in Orange County.
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2050 Main St.: Fisher & Phillips moving OC office to Opus West building |
Local homes here being marketed include a two-bedroom home in Santa Ana listed for $130,000, a 1,000-square-foot condo in Corona del Mar listed for $560,000, and a three-bedroom home in San Clemente listed for $929,000.
Previously, most of Impac’s foreclosed homes were used by Irvine-based home auctioneer Real Estate Disposition Co. for its high-volume foreclosure business, which included the sales of more than $1 billion in homes during the past year.
In Impac’s latest quarterly report filed this month with the Securities and Exchange Commission, it said it was terminating its advisory services agreement partnership with an undisclosed “real estate marketing company,” and was being paid $37 million to end the agreement.
A source familiar with the move said it was a matter of profit taking as Impac’s stake in the venture had grown in value.
Real Estate Disposition’s auctions still are listed on Impac’s Web site. The next local auction is slated for Friday in Irvine.
Loan Modifications
The latest quarterly report from Irvine’s Standard Pacific Corp., filed with the SEC this month, gives a clear picture of how much the homebuilder’s internal mortgage division has had to change its lending practices during the past two years.
At the end of the third quarter, 94% of mortgages made by Standard Pacific’s financial services division were fixed-rate loans, compared to 80% a year ago, and 57% two years ago.
Similarly, 95% of the loans the company made last quarter were for borrowers with credit scores higher than 700, compared to 85% a year ago and 71% two years ago.
Stated-income loans, where borrowers don’t fully document their incomes, also have gone by the wayside at the homebuilder. In the third quarter of 2006, 62% of the loans the company’s mortgage division made were not full-documentation loans.
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Last quarter, those types of deals only made up 3% of the loans Standard Pacific made.
Fisher & Phillips LLP, an Atlanta-based labor and employment law firm, is moving its OC office to Opus West Corp.’s new Irvine office building at 2050 Main St.
The law firm, which counts about 30 lawyers and a dozen partners locally, signed a 24,942-square-foot lease at the building. Details of the 10-year lease were not disclosed.
Fisher & Phillips is expected to move into the space in March. The firm, which represents businesses in the areas of labor, employment, civil rights, employee benefits and immigration law, had been based locally in the nearby Irvine Center Towers campus.
It’s the second law firm that Phoenix-based Opus West has signed on for its 314,074-square-foot tower, which opened about a year ago near John Wayne Airport. Luce Forward also runs its OC practice from the building.
Jack McNutt and Chon Kantikovit of Grubb & Ellis Co.’s Newport Beach office and Kay Davis of Grubb’s Atlanta office represented Fisher & Phillips in the transaction. Dean Chandler and John Weiner of CB Richard Ellis Group Inc.’s Newport Beach office represented the landlord.
