Guild Mortgage will be first in line to refinance billions in mortgages if mortgage rates come down next year, as a sister company of the nation’s largest nonbank mortgage servicer, Lakeview Loan Servicing, following the closure of a $1.3 billion merger that takes parent company Guild Holdings Co. private.
Bayview Asset Management acquired all of Guild Holdings’ outstanding common stock for $20 a share in an all-cash transaction on Friday, with Guild delisted from the New York Stock Exchange, the companies said.
The deal is reminiscent of Rocket Companies’ $14.2 billion acquisition of the nation’s largest loan servicer, Mr. Cooper, which Rocket hopes will boost its refinancing business.
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Loan servicers collect monthly mortgage payments from homeowners on behalf of investors who own the loans, earning fees that can smooth out the ups and downs of the mortgage business — and giving lenders who are also loan servicers the inside track at refinancing those homeowners.
Terry Schmidt
“Joining Bayview’s platform strengthens Guild’s commitment to grow our national brand, and it creates one of the strongest and most compelling mortgage origination and servicing ecosystems in the nation,” Guild CEO Terry Schmidt said in a statement.
Under the terms of the merger agreement, Schmidt, Guild Mortgage President David Neylan and Chief Financial Officer Amber Kramer will continue to serve in their executive roles and as Guild Mortgage directors.
San Diego-based Guild Mortgage sponsors 2,683 mortgage loan originators working out of 680 branch locations and is licensed in every state but New York, according to records maintained by the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System.
The vast majority of Guild’s $24 billion in 2024 loan production — 88 percent — came from purchase mortgages, compared to 72 percent for the industry as a whole.
But part of Guild’s business model is to retain the mortgage servicing rights (MSRs) on the loans it originates, and the company has doubled its servicing portfolio since 2019.
Guild grows mortgage servicing rights portfolio
Source: Guild Holdings earnings reports.
As a loan servicer, Guild was collecting monthly payments from 387,000 borrowers with $98.3 billion in outstanding mortgage balances as of Sept. 30, the company disclosed on Nov. 6 in its final quarterly earnings report as a publicly traded company.
During the first nine months of the year, Guild had a 23 percent purchase recapture rate, a 50 percent refinance recapture rate and a 33 percent overall recapture rate.
Guild will operate as a privately held independent entity of Bayview Asset Management’s MSR Fund, which also owns Lakeview Loan Servicing — giving it an edge in offering refinancing to more than two million borrowers serviced by Lakeview.
“The Guild leadership team is excited to bring our expertise in distributed retail origination, retained servicing, and the customer-for-life business model to the MSR Fund,” Schmidt said.
Fannie Mae economists predict rates on 30-year fixed-rate loans will fall below 6 percent by the end of next year, boosting 2026 refinancing volume by 73 percent, to $847 billion. Forecasters at the Mortgage Bankers Association expect mortgage rates will average 6.4 percent next year, with refinancing growing by a more modest 6 percent, to $737 billion.
Rocket’s long-term goal is to capture 20 percent of the mortgage loan refinancing business and 8 percent of the purchase loan market, and this year’s acquisitions of Mr. Cooper and real estate brokerage Redfin could help it hit those targets.
Aided by AI-driven insights and marketing, Mr. Cooper and Rocket’s combined $2 trillion loan servicing portfolio owed by 10 million homeowners is expected to generate big business in refinancing, while preferred mortgage pricing for Redfin-linked deals could drive purchase loan growth.
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