An Alliance with the ‘Playground Bully’

After news broke that former Rocket Pro execs Mike Fawaz & Dan Sogorka had started a new mortgage tech platform called Origna8 & “partnered” w/ UWM, I received a lot of text messages. 

After all, in another life Fawaz was Mat Ishbia’s chief antagonist at Rocket: Fawaz called Ishbia a “playground bully” & said he uses his power “to intimidate & coerce those w/ less power.” He even helped create “Bully Shield” to defend LOs against UWM’s legal threats.

But now Fawaz is cozying up to his former adversary. “After sitting w/ Mat & learning about what he’s done, spending a ton of time looking at the UWM vision, mission, leadership & what they’re trying to do for the broker community, there’s no other place I would rather be,” he told HW. 

Ishbia, in turn, called Fawaz a “winner & a leader” & congratulated him on “opening his shop.”

I am quite confident this is not something Ishbia or Fawaz would have been caught saying a few months ago. But life — and opportunity — comes at you fast in the mortgage biz.

In today’s edition, I break down what Fawaz & Sogorka’s new company is actually doing & the opportunity in front of them. Plus, the latest on how lenders are recruiting, NEXA news, what Real Brokerage’s acquisition of RE/MAX means for mortgage & more.

Origna8 is being pitched as a mortgage operating system, w/ heavy emphasis on the lead gen & conversion aspect. In short, Fawaz & Sogorka want to solve the problem of brokers being in & out of several platforms. Origna8 will perform “agentic AI” marketing, offer real-time data insights & provide an exclusive lead engine w/ "unreal conversion rates, for every type of loan."

Here are some additional, largely unreported details regarding Origna8:

Maybe this is really is what it appears on the surface: two former colleagues who were working on broadly similar stuff at Rocket & are now partnering w/ the biggest lender in the space b/c they can’t do so w/ their old employer. And UWM might just be happy to have a former adversary saying nice things about them w/o having to give anything up.

But several wholesale sources speculated it could be more than that: a hedge against ARIVE, and/or perhaps even a stealthy recruiting play to go after Rocket-affiliated broker shops via another vehicle. The AIME-Sweeney lawsuit alleges that UWM will support other orgs in wholesale, but only on its terms. We’ll continue to follow this one.

(Unrelated but I’m a bit confused on the spelling of “Origna8.” Phonetically, the pronunciation suggests “Ohr-igg-nate,” and not, “Oh-ridge–in-ate” as I believe they intended???)

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Jon Overfelt put together an excellent breakdown of LO recruiting at the moment. Margins are tight, volume is inconsistent but growth is still directly tied to whom you recruit. 

Everyone wants the top producers doing 8+ units, he wrote. But competition is heavy, they’ll need 70+ bps to move & upfront support like assistants. It may not work out due to market shifts, pipeline volatility, culture fit. So you better be confident in your platform’s ability to scale them, ops capacity & ability to retain them. 

The “moveable” talent sits in the next tier - 4-8 units a month. These LOs are “one piece away from leveling up,” operating in a system that’s pretty good but not fully optimized or might care more about quality of life than income. 

“You’re not selling a job,” he said. “You’re helping them answer one of three questions:

The advantage is less operational strain, higher upside if the platform is built correctly…and they’re cheaper to acquire than top producers. 

Most get overly optimistic in the ≤3 units/month segment. Maybe only 1 in 10 actually performs, he wrote. Check out his full article here.

Real Brokerage is buying RE/MAX Holdings for $550M. It will bring together 80K agents in total under the cloud-based brokerage’s banner. Real Brokerage has its own captive mortgage company called One Real Mortgage & RE/MAX has Motto Mortgage. But they have very different models. 

Motto, a mortgage brokerage franchisor will remain separate. One Real is a more interesting case. It’s now under CEO Kate Gurevich & much of the play is focused on agents getting in on the LO action (dual licensing). Neither originator does a big amount of volume.

The transaction will not affect the operations of Wemlo nor Real. A spokesperson declined to comment but in an earnings call today Real CEO Tamir Poleg talked about how more ancillary services under one roof would help agents.

"It gives agents & their clients more control over each transaction w/ fewer hands-off, faster closings and a better experience end-to-end," he said.

Mike Kortas had strong words for loanDepot in response to its recent trade secrets lawsuit, telling NMN that the lawsuit is “pathetic” & he will countersue.

“We already have case law & NEXA doesn’t have a damn thing of theirs,” he wrote. “We’ve told them that many times & those jackasses just want to pound on their chest because they’re getting their asses kicked by brokers anyway.”

In other NEXA news, Kortas pulled off a recruiting coup by landing Christopher Griffith to lead VA lending. Griffith, who is well-known in the broker world & makes his brand about integrity, isn’t leaving Vetted VA…

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