Bill Cosgrove is hungry. Hungry for deals. A few months after buying MLB’s Tampa Bay Rays, he’s acquired the assets of Sierra Pacific Mortgage for an undisclosed sum. The deal gives Cleveland-based Cosgrove a beachhead 🏖 in California & the opportunity to expand Union’s wholesale game.

Multi-channel lender Sierra Pacific has struggled in recent years to scale. In some ways, this felt inevitable, sources said. Owner Jim Coffrini had been actively shopping the lender he founded in 1986, sources said, with at least 3 other prospective buyers passing before Union Home stepped in.

“Sierra has been a good competitor, but I think lack of scale has hindered them,” said one wholesale source. “Jim Coffrini has always been very focused on P&L & he has never done anything crazy to grow. Jim is one of the best operators I’ve ever seen.”

Several sources told The Mortgage Scoop that even senior sales leaders at Sierra Pacific were unaware that a deal was imminent ahead of the Tuesday call. A good chunk of non-sales staff likely will not be offered jobs at Union. Sierra Pacific, which does a large share of its business in California 🌴, has 149 sponsored LOs across 42 active branches, per NMLS records.

Union LOs as of Wednesday morning had not been officially told of the acquisition, though there’s little geographic overlap & the bulk of Sierra Pacific’s business is in wholesale.

It was not immediately clear whether Sierra Pacific’s servicing portfolio was included in the transaction. Multiple sources said it was not included, but that could not be independently confirmed by press time.

The deal marks Union’s second acquisition of 2025, following its earlier purchase of Nations Reliable Lending & catapults Union into the pantheon of top-15 IMBs.

Industry insiders described Cosgrove as “smart, ruthless and ambitious,” with a reputation for hand-selecting talent. “He will pay whatever for whatever size loan officer if he personally likes them,” said one source in the Midwest. “Their non-compete clawback is iron clad & pretty frightening.”

Sources said Sierra Pacific LOs would continue to use its proprietary LOS system, though Union is on Encompass.

Perhaps most intriguing is what this means for wholesale. Union is best known for its network of retail branches in the Midwest & East Coast, & isn’t much of a player in wholesale. With the Sierra deal, they’re picking up “some very good people who’ve been there a long time” in wholesale, one source said. Union also recently joined the ARIVE platform, which could open up more broker business.

In May, Cosgrove said he felt the mortgage industry was still way overcapacity. “There's too many companies, I think there are too many loan officers chasing too few deals,” he said. “All you have to do is look at the record-low margins & fight to the death to put your LO in a position to win that loan, which is bringing record-low margin per transaction. The economics are more difficult. I don't say this lightly —they're more difficult than I've seen in 39 years in this business.”

Given how dicey it is for a lender under $2B to make it right now, I would be surprised if Union didn’t make more acquisitions in the next few years.

Optimal Blue’s Kevin Foley has been crazy busy tracking all the mortgage market movement. The Mortgage Scoop asked him to share what he’s seeing ahead of the Fed’s 25 bps rate cut.

“Going into Fed Day, markets are expecting three quarter-point cuts to round out 2025, including today’s expected cut. The consensus is fairly remarkable, w/ 70% of market participants predicting this outcome – which is still 3 months away. 

What will be key in Jerome Powell’s press conference is whether any language undermines this consensus. There’s still a lot that can happen between now & Christmas. Today also marks the 1-year anniversary of when rates bottomed out in 2024. 

On Sept. 17, 2024, the Optimal Blue Mortgage Market Index (OBMMI) dropped to 6.03%, before steadily climbing toward 7% by the end of the year. The OBMMI also closed at its lowest level of 2025 yesterday, coming in at 6.17%. Will the last quarter of 2025 see a similar rate climb to what we saw in 2024, or will we see more rate relief in Q4? 

One key data point to be released later this week will be business inflation expectations, which peaked earlier this year at 2.8%, but fell back to 2.3% as of August. This is important to follow, because even if we see short-term inflation impacts from tariffs, business inflation expectations are what could turn this into a long-term problem. Next week, we will see an updated Q2 GDP print on Thursday, as well as the Fed’s preferred inflation metric, Core PCE, on Friday. These data points, plus the September non-farm payroll number on October 3, will give us a much better picture of what the end of the year might look like.”

A few LOs also told me today that they felt the interest rate cut has already been priced into mortgage rates. While rates may not fall too much today, customers will be aware & set up strategy sessions for refis, they said. What are you seeing out there? Email me at [email protected] or text me at 201 994 9638.

As we explored last week, the industry is notorious for spending huge 🤑 on “shit LOs don’t use.” They’re overwhelmed, they give up easily. Let’s talk about how to fix that. A couple commenters weighed in on how to get LOs to adopt the tech.

“On-boarding and ongoing training is so critical for tech adoption success,” said Kevin Peranio of PRMG. “One of the biggest things missing is true vested success of adoption from both 👯 parties,” added Chris Gassel. “There is always a new initiative & a new tech to either implement or upgrade.”

All too often, users use something a few times and if it doesn’t do exactly what they wanted it to do, they’re done with it, Arcasa’s Gassel said. “The most successful launches come [when] leadership stands by the investment & continues to push adoption down stream.”

There should be training for all the platforms & the training should include real-world use cases that the LO can use the tool for, said Mr. Cooper’s Michael Peronto. “In addition, you should post the training on the platforms w/FAQs on an internal site so if a LO needs a refresher they can quickly & easily see it,” he said. “If it takes 10 clicks and 5 fields input to send it to this tool? It's very likely it will be used less. If you aren't syncing back fields from the integration, you could lose out on valuable reporting.”

For others, the answer is maddeningly simple. “They don't get used because they don't work as good as advertised,” concluded Jon Overfelt. “If you want to find tech that works, look for what the LO is actually paying for.”

🙏 If you like what you’re reading, tell a fellow mortgage junkie to sign up here.