Newport Beach-based William Lyon Homes (NYSE: WLH) has launched a title insurance, settlement and mortgage agency in part through the acquisition of Irvine’s South Pacific Financial Corp.
Terms of the acquisition, announced last week, were not immediately disclosed.
South Pacific, a Spectrum-area provider of home loans and other related services with about 20 branches to its name, has been rebranded as ClosingMark Homes Loans Inc. It will operate under William Lyon’s new wholly-owned financial services unit, ClosingMark Financial Group.
The group recently began title agency services in Central Texas, Arizona, Colorado and Nevada, and will expand its offerings into all of the company’s homebuilding markets over the next two quarters.
William Lyon Homes has a market value of about $730 million. It also sells homes in Washington, Oregon, and California, its largest market.
It recently took the wraps off Novel Park, the latest community to open at FivePoint Holdings LLC’s Great Park Neighborhoods in Irvine. The 536-home project, which counts some of the more affordable new home options in Irvine in years, is the largest new home project opening in Orange County this year.
Stearns Ties
ClosingMark will be led by Brian Hale, previously chief executive of Stearns Lending in Santa Ana.
He oversaw growth of mortgage origination volume at Stearns from $5.7 billion in 2011 to $26 billion in 2016.
William Lyon hired Hale last year “to optimize and build out our financial services group, and putting us in position to have a full suite of in-house financial services available to our homebuyers by the end of the year,” said President and Chief Executive Matthew Zaist in a statement.
“Under Brian’s leadership, ClosingMark will be committed to providing competitive financial services and outstanding customer service to support the needs of our homebuyers and complement our homebuilding operations, while providing an additional source of earnings for the company,” Zaist added.
Stearns Lending has cut its local operations from 583 in 2017 to 48 as of last month, in the wake of its 2015 sale to Blackstone Group, which saw personnel and headquarters moved to Texas.
The lender filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this month.
William Lyon said it will integrate all of its mortgage and loan operations into the new ClosingMark entity in the next several months.
