Alera Financial (Wholesale) - Wholesale (Alt-A, Subprime?)

(This is retroactive addition as of August 19th, 2007) A statement on this NC-based lender's web site describes its exit from the wholesale lending business:

Raleigh, NC 7/23/07 — Alera Financial, one of the country’s fastest growing mortgage lenders based in the Raleigh-Durham, NC area, announced today they are concentrating their strengths to focus entirely on expanding their retail lending market in the Raleigh/Durham area as well as several other key states that have tremendous growth potential for Alera. Wholesale operations will be suspended as of 7/24/07 in order to reorganize operation to focus on these aggressive new retail goals. All current Wholesale loans in pipeline will be honored.

The statement also points out that Alera lent in 12 states. We're unsure of volume or employee count for wholesale.

We're also unclear on the operation's loan mix. The retail side's web site lists a variety of products, including those that would fall in the "subprime" and "Alt-A" rubrics.

The same site's about page has some basic background on the company:

Alera Financial was founded in 1996 as Southeastern Residential Mortgage. The company came under new ownership in September 2003 with Peter Heffring as President of Alera Financial. With his strong background in technology, Peter has helped created innovative technology to help Alera rise to new levels of customer service.