Homefield Financial - Alt-A Lender (Retail and Wholesale)

Update 2007-08-13:

We have come to learn that HomeField's Retail operations have also ceased. Per an informant:

I'm a former employee of Homefield Financial. I noticed their Wholesale division is on your list of imploded lenders, so I wanted to let you know that you can add their core operations - retail - to your website as well. I believe it was about 3 weeks ago that they completely ceased all mortgage operations and their now extinct completely.

...

They were mid-sized - funding around 1,000 loans per month at their peak - $180K average loan size. They had two offices - approximately 70-80 loan officers. They had in house processors - maybe another 30-40, their own mortgage banking operations, in-house underwriters, and in-house escrow. Probably 70% was correspondent, and 30% brokered. Most of their product was neg-am and alt-a, but there was quite a bit of sub-prime that went out as well ...

Original "imploded" listing (Wholesale):

According to their web site:

Homefield Financial, wholesale division, would like to thank all of the mortgage brokers that have submitted broker packages and/or loan application packages to it. It is with great regret that Homefield announces that the Homefield wholesale division will no longer be accepting broker applications for consideration of a broker/lender relationship, and/or loan application packages for loan approval.

They have taken down the rest of the web site, but here is a description of the company courtesy of the Google cache:

Welcome to Homefield Financial, an INC 500 Company
Homefield Financial, Inc., established in 1998, is a fast growing and dynamic national mortgage lender specialized in Alt-A and non-conforming products with special emphasis on Interest Only, Stated and No income Documentation, and Option ARM products. We're committed to providing our brokers new and exciting programs at FASTER service speeds than our competition.

The page also lists as news from august last year that Homefield had just introduced a 5-year pay option ARM product (hot-dog!) and expansion into the state of Virginia.

I can't think of a better illustration of the trade-off between speed and prudent lending... and this is not even sub-prime!