Per their website:
Effective March 14th, Master Financial will cease its wholesale loan origination operation including accepting new applications for mortgage loans and funding loans in its pipeline.
All loans that have an approval must close and fund by March 16th, 2007 If you have any questions regarding loans in process, please call 714-456-1000. MFI will, however, continue to service mortgage loans and maintain its customer service line for borrower inquiries, etc.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you or your borrowers. It has truly been a pleasure doing business with you.
UPDATE: Company memo posted in the comments section
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Master Financial
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7 comments:
I am so sorry to hear another shady lender has went under.I might have to have a drink to that.
good riddance!!
Here is the memo:
To all of the employees of Master Financial, Inc.
It is with the deepest regret that I have to announce that we are ceasing operations in our wholesale sub-prime origination unit effective today. This comes as a result of a continued strain in the secondary market and lack of liquidity for the loans we, as an industry, produce. The news over the last few weeks from New Century, Accredited, Fremont, and others has put us into a position where we have no choice but to discontinue our origination business right now. We have been aggressively looking for ways to navigate this tough market and to find alternatives to funding and sources for capital; however, with the news today and pressure from Wall Street, we are now out of options.
We are not in this position because we have problems, or that our loans are bad, or that we did anything wrong. This is an industry-wide phenomenon, strictly due to the unprecedented market conditions that exist today. There is really nothing we could do right now or could have done over the last twelve months to avoid this.
We have accomplished so many good things during the turn around at MFI, and each of you played an important part in our success. Each of you should be proud of your contribution to our organization and achievements. We are working diligently on trying to create a future here, but in the interim, there will be a tremendous amount of activity and necessary moves in an effort to serve our customers as best we can. So, here is what you can expect to happen over the next day or two.
* We are going to announce, today, to our broker customers that we will be ceasing operations immediately and that the last day of funding will be this Friday, March 16 th.
* We will be working with all MFI Associates over the next 24 hours on how this will impact each of you.
* We will work to protect our licenses and franchise value.
* We will continue to service loans and work hard to mitigate our exposure to early pay defaults and delinquency.
We are working on our plans to hopefully re-emerge as a better company once the market returns and will do what we can to deal with our situation right now. We understand that it is a difficult time for everyone in our industry, so we will do what we can to help you and our customers adjust through this transition.
We will do what we can to provide information as we have it available.
David J. Vida
Chief Executive Officer
Master Financial, Inc.
505 City Parkway West, 8th Floor
Orange, CA 92868
714-456-1020 (direct)
714-456-1149 (fax)
949-322-0120 (cell)
dvida@mfinet.com
Also from the website:
Master Financial, Inc., formed in 1981, is a mortgage banking company headquartered in Orange, California engaged in the acquisition, origination, and servicing of residential first and second mortgages nationwide. Today, MFI produces products, commonly referred to as “Alt-A” or "Non-Prime", for borrowers that generally do not satisfy the credit, documentation or other underwriting standards prescribed by conventional mortgage lenders.
"Master Financial, Inc., formed in 1981"
Wow, these guys were actually around a long time - long enough to see a few RE cycles come and go. They must have done something right to have lasted that long. A monster bubble will do that though: take a perfectly good business and destroy it from the inside. Greed, fraud, corruption, fear-mongering. Ugh, this bubble has it all.
It's weird how a bubble will sneak up on you, though. Think about it from the perspective of being a long-time RE agent (maybe from the early-1990's or even before) and you see a lot more attention paid to your industry as it starts bubbling in 2000-2001. Next, hordes of Johnny-come-latelys start moving into your action to get a piece of all of that hot money. Pretty soon your industry is wrecked by all of this hot cash which disappears as fast as it came and then everybody hates you even though you never did anything wrong and were just thrown out with the bath water.
Will MFI resurface later? Hard to tell but my guess is probably not. These problems are too big and structural to be worked-off anytime soon. JMHO.
Master Finanacial had some really shady programs. I remeber my rep telling me they would take a written VOE in place of w2s and paystubs on a 100% loan and they wouldn't require a 4506T. This was back in early 2001. He also hinted that it was okay to doctor it up so it would look good to the underwriter.
I personally had a real problem with the suggestion he made and never sent them a loan. They were lucky to make as long as they did. based on my experience it had nothing to do with being a good company.
Do we know if Master's servicing platform is for sale at all? Any rumors or plans?
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