Biggest Subprime Lenders

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBAs) Monday released the latest annual ranking report of subprime lenders’ national and statewide market share. The report detailed subprime retail mortgage originations in number, dollar volume, and purchase versus refinance.

Industrywide, subprime lenders originated nearly two million loans last year amounting to $276.3 billion, according to MBA.

The largest market share was captured by Irvine, Calif.-based New Century Mortgage with $23.9 billion in single-family loans, or 8.7% of the U.S. subprime market share, the trade association reported. A little over 146,000 loans accounted for the annual production of the division of New Century Financial Corp., which Fortune magazine rated the fastest-growing mortgage-related company.

Following in second place was Ohio-based National City Corp. with volume of $19.8 billion, or 7.2 percent of the nation’s nonprime market share, MBA said. National City is the parent company of First Franklin Financial Corp.

Spots three through seven were all taken by subprime lenders headquartered in the Golden State; Ameriquest Mortgage with $18.9 billion was third, followed by Option One Mortgage with $18.1 billion, Fremont Investment & Loan with $13.5 billion and Long Beach Mortgage Co., a subsidiary of Washington Mutual, with $11.5 billion.

California was recently cited by MBA as the state with the most residential mortgage originations, including conforming and subprime.

Finishing out the top 10 were Citigroup, which captured 3.7% of the market share with $10.2 billion in subprime loan originations, followed by Full Spectrum Lending and Fieldstone Mortgage Co., each with 2.7% of the subprime share, and WMC Mortgage Corp. with 2.6%.

Full spectrum, a subsidiary of Countrywide Financial Corp., and WMC are also based in California — the state with the largest share of overall mortgage originations in the nation last year, according to the MBA.

The results were based on mortgage lending transactions at more than 8,100 financial institutions covered by the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, which covers more than 34 million loans, MBA said.