Becoming a Mortgage lender

[David Pittman]

Good afternoon BP Community!

I am a partner in a General Contracting business building new Custom and Production homes. We are in a small town outside of Houston that is one of the fastest growing areas in the greater Houston area. For the past 25 years we have been one of a few GC's in this area, but now we are starting to see the big guys come in (Castle Rock, Chesmar, Lennar, etc.). They have met some resistance in our community, but the one thing  they have is financing. We do all our own construction financing in house, but would like to explore the long term financing opportunities. I assume these production companies have started their own financing companies and have deep pocket investors with them.

We are still busy, when other companies are not, but if we were able to do our own long term financing at a lower rate than the banks than we would only be a stronger company. This is the primary reason we don't have even more business than we do, interest rates are too high.

My question is how does one start a lending company, not a brokerage? I don't want to have to have our customers go anywhere else for any kind of financing. We have our own office and showroom. If we added a mortgage office, our customers could buy a new home turn key, just from our office. Is it as simple as starting a company and having the investors and underwriters to back it? If anybody has done this, do you collect a point and the rest goes to the investor? So if we offered 5.5%, our company would receive 1% and the investor 4.5%?

Any advice is greatly appreciated!