HomeLend wants to make buying mortgages less of a mortgage

A fund has the money. It has a founder who knows mortgages. It has a plan to buy them. What it lacks is the unglamorous apparatus that makes buying possible: sellers, pricing, loan files, reviews and people to keep the transaction moving. In one HomeLend case study, building that apparatus was expected to require millions in upfront costs and a large team. The fund chose another route. HomeLend says its investment programs, workflows and initial seller network were set up in about three weeks.

Three weeks, and a great deal of paperwork

Three weeks is the arresting detail. The more revealing one is what the customer had planned to build. This was a mortgage purchasing conduit: an operation for sourcing and acquiring loans. A commitment of capital does not automatically produce such an operation. Someone still has to decide which loans qualify, establish relationships with sellers and see that a purchase survives contact with the documents.

HomeLend, a New York financial technology company, supplies that infrastructure. Its direct marketplace brings originators and other mortgage sellers together with institutional investors. Its mission is to remove capital barriers in the mortgage industry. That sounds abstract until a willing buyer discovers how much organization is required to become an actual buyer.

The investor writes the shopping list

Consider the distinction between owning mortgage-backed securities and buying mortgages themselves. HomeLend works with whole loans. Its buyers can define investment programs and acquire loans meeting their parameters. The company’s launch announcement, dated October 1, 2021, focused on non-agency residential mortgages and the choice facing investors: pay for intermediation or build an acquisition operation in-house.

The interesting feature is how precisely a buyer can express an appetite. HomeLend’s launch materials describe programs that can value characteristics such as lower debt-to-income ratios or greater cash reserves. A lender receives pricing shaped by those preferences. The rate sheet becomes a translation device between capital on one side and the loans being produced on the other.

“the manner in which mortgages are purchased and priced has not materially changed in decades”Noam Ben-Ozer · platform launch, 2021

Today’s product menu is broader: Non-QM, investment-property DSCR loans, bridge and residential transition loans, second liens, HELOCs and jumbo mortgages. It also lists doctor loans, ITIN borrowers and certain agency-eligible investment-property or second-home loans. These are examples of participating investors’ offerings. A menu gives a lender avenues to explore; eligibility still comes from the relevant program.

The work hiding behind a price

HomeLend Direct starts with analytics, investment programs, guidelines and workflow preferences. Then come pricing and locks, the commitments between seller and buyer. After that, the platform coordinates delivery, imaging, data verification, loan review and the clearing of conditions. Purchase advice and servicing transfer follow. Even after purchase, the advertised workflow includes performance monitoring, repurchase handling and secondary trades.

Other products address particular pieces of the same problem. BulkHub sources loan pools and screens bid tapes against investor specifications. Transaction Facilitation handles data, diligence coordination and servicing transfer. Booster lets selected counterparties add representations and warranties to loans, allowing an investor to face those counterparties. The advisory offering supplies infrastructure for mortgage investment management accounts. HomeLend Correspondent supports purchases from a lender’s own network.

There is an operational reason for the breadth. A marketplace that stops at an introduction leaves customers to assemble the rest. HomeLend’s offering extends into the administrative work that can make a perfectly sensible trade troublesome. Its public hiring page reflects that emphasis, with roles in seller success and lock-desk analysis alongside marketing.

Noam Ben Ozer / CEO

Eli Gur / CTO

The leadership biographies fit that combination. Founder and CEO Noam Ben Ozer’s background spans technology, finance and real estate. Chief operating officer Peter Fastovsky previously headed Western Alliance Bank’s mortgage conduit. CTO Eli Gur’s biography lists mathematics, computer science and physics degrees. The useful expertise here is knowing how the transaction works as well as how to write the software.

More buyers, fewer awkward conversations

For a seller, the attraction is access. HomeLend offers live pricing, instant locking and unified condition clearing across several transaction formats. It states there is no investment or cost to the seller. For buyers, its pitch includes no upfront investment and no fixed costs. Those claims describe the platform’s commercial proposition, rather than the cost of the mortgages being purchased.

One company case study starts with a national originator dependent on a single investor for second-lien mortgages. HomeLend says it introduced several viable investors and helped the lender develop a correspondent business. The reported result was approximately 700 loans sold in six months. It is an anonymized, company-reported example, rather than a promised result for every lender.

The practical point is concentration. If a lender’s one buyer changes its appetite, the lender has fewer choices. Additional relationships can create alternatives, although each buyer still has criteria. HomeLend’s recent public LinkedIn posts describe more than 20 institutional investors. Such a network matters when its participants actually want the loans a seller has to offer.

A marketplace that finishes the job

HomeLend announced a $5 million seed financing led by New Era Capital Partners in August 2024, following earlier SAFE rounds. Later that year, it announced residential transition loan trading with M2 Capital Partners and a partnership to run Stride Bank’s Non-QM and DSCR programs on its platform. The partnerships show institutions using the infrastructure to distribute particular lending programs.

The lesson for another business is to inspect what happens after customers agree on a deal. HomeLend has made that interval its territory. Its appeal depends on willing capital, suitable loans and workable underwriting and counterparty arrangements. Software cannot manufacture those ingredients. It can organize the work around them. In mortgages, that work is substantial enough to be a business of its own.