Fix-and-flip mortgage lender Anchor Loans has adopted a new corporate identity and is moving into other forms of business purpose lending following its acquisition by Pretium in November.
The company had a soft launch of a single-family rental product in January and a full roll-out will happen in the next month or two. The company is also considering products for the fix-and-hold market.
"The market share is out there for us for the taking," said CEO Andy Pollock. "And we've grown our organization for excess capacity within our processing division, our underwriting division, and our enterprise sales [and] evaluations teams so that way we're able to take on more volume through organic growth."
Anchor is also looking at changes to its leverage ratios, its pricing matrix and its collateral requirements.
While investor property purchases are increasing, it may not translate into more volume for fix-and-flip lenders. Real estate investor single-family home purchases in the third quarter had a 16.4% share of all transactions during the period, up from 11.7% one year prior, according to RealtyTrac.
"The share of investor purchases continues to rise in the vast majority of states," RealtyTrac Executive Vice President Rick Sharga said in a press release. "Despite historically low inventory of homes for sale, and historically high prices, both fix-and-flip and rental property investors continue to be very active in the residential market."
Meanwhile, the median purchase price was $245,000 for investors compared with $302,000 for all home purchases, data from RealtyTrac's parent company Attom Data Solutions, found.
But the share of all-cash purchases among investors increased, to 79% in the third quarter of 2021, up from 69.5% in the same period one year prior. Cash deals accounted for more than 50% of all investor purchases in every state, except for Alaska, Wyoming and the District of Columbia.
Although Anchor lends in 48 states, much of its business was concentrated in the west. But now, it is focusing on expansion in targeted MSAs east of the Mississippi, along the eastern seaboard and in the Mid-Atlantic States, but also within the southeast, southwest and central portions of the country.
The company, which in August reached the $10 billion mark in loans funded since its creation in 1998, had its best year ever in 2021 at $1.8 billion in originations. Business increased month after month in 2021, from $90 million in January to a little over $200 million for December.
The new branding effort is designed to get Anchor noticed. "Even though we're an over 20 year-old company, there's still people that have never heard of Anchor Loans," Pollock said. "Well, wait and see. It's our intent that everyone knows us."
