A Florida real estate broker filed a federal lawsuit against United Wholesale Mortgage’s parent company and CEO Mat Ishbia over the launching the Broker Wars, in which Ishbia forbade brokers from doing business with two competitors if it wanted to continue to work with UWM. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Jacksonville, alleges UWM issued its ultimatum “in a desperate attempt to stifle competition” and to “mitigate its acknowledged risk of losing market share.” UWM announced in April that it would force brokers to sign an agreement that they will not work with Rocket Mortgage or Fairway Independent Mortgage – or else be banned from work with UWM, the largest wholesale mortgage lender. Ishbia charged the two companies…
United Wholesale Mortgage CEO Mat Ishbia went on CNBC on Wednesday to assert he is the good guy in the BrokerWars by standing up for brokers and “for what is right.” “I know how different people want to portray it, but the decision was not about doing things exclusively,” Ishbia said on an interview on CNBC. “We basically said ‘Hey mortgage brokers, 12,000 of you guys, if you’re partnering with Rocket, they’re out there doing things – maybe you call it underhandedly, maybe in a gray area, to affect consumers and brokers.’ What we’re saying is, listen I can’t stop them, but if you’re going to work with them, don’t work with us.” UWM announced earlier this month that it will force brokers to…
Like Rocket Mortgage, Fairway Independent Mortgage is reporting increased interest from brokers after United Wholesale Mortgage launched the Broker Wars. HousingWire reported today: Since UWM president and CEO Mat Ishbia appeared on Facebook Live on March 4 and announced that brokers could not work with Fairway and Rocket Mortgage and still do business with UWM, Fairway has seen a dramatic uptick in business, according to its CEO, Steve Jacobson. “We typically had one or two inquiries a week for the broker channel,” said Jacobson, who founded the lender in 1996. “We’re up over 100 inquiries since March 4.” Fairway, which did about $3.5 billion in the wholesale channel in 2020 (compared to about $62 billion in retail), lost roughly 5%…
