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By PAUL HUGHES
Vista Point Mortgage LLC is now offering its correspondent lending clients an enhanced closed-end second mortgage product on residential properties with up to four units, and its plans are to add home-equity lines of credit to the menu while eyeing shared-equity products.
An advertised CES program expansion at the Irvine, California-based company brings the maximum loan amount to $450,000 and makes two-to-four-unit residential properties acceptable security. The properties can be owner-occupied, investor-owned or a second home. Bank statements can be used to verify income.
“This is an excellent opportunity for delegated correspondent lenders to expand their program offerings and utilize the tremendous $7 trillion of built equity in the housing market,” the statement said.
In addition to cash-out home-equity transactions, the loan can be utilized in a home purchase transaction.
Bill Ashmore, Vista Point
In an interview, Vista Point Founder and Chief Executive Officer Bill Ashmore said combined-loan-to-value ratios can go as high as 90 percent on purchase-money transactions with full documentation.
Joining the CEO in the interview was Jim Malloy, chief operating officer at the lender, who noted, “Weighted average production company-wide is strong” with “very low CLTV, 69% to 70%, FICOs in [the] 730 range, [debt-to-income ratios] in the mid-30s.”
Malloy said the average balance is $200,000, with geographic dispersion: “less than half in California.”
Vista Point developed its CES in 2022 by “talking with vendors, rating agencies, and capital markets broadly,” Molloy said, and launched what he called the “first nationwide platform” for non-QM CES mortgages in December 2022.
A key effort for Vista is education, the duo said, because borrowers tapping equity commonly think cash-out first-mortgage refinancing is the only way to do that. Its BlendedRate.com website lets “a broker or correspondent walk borrowers through the math of a CES instead of a cash-out refi,” Molloy said.
“The most important thing” is to help borrowers “keep an existing low-rate first lien and obtain a CES,” Ashmore said.
While Vista Point doesn’t offer HELOC or home-equity investment products, Malloy noted that it is developing a HELOC program for “sometime in Q2.”
Ashmore added that there may be growing and future demand for a hybrid HEi offering, pairing equity sharing with a low-rate loan to solve the no-cash-flow liquidity challenge of HEi products.
Vista Point declined comment on origination volume. But they did talk about their secondary market strategy for the product.
“We’re preparing the balance sheet, anticipating securitization this year,” Ashmore explained.
Malloy added that they are “selling a portion of it into whole-loan markets, setting up long-term partnerships” with those investors.
Paul Hughes is a freelance reporter for Home Equity Lending News. He’s been a journalist for 30 years at publications including the Orange County Business Journal and Entrepreneur Media. He earned two master’s degrees from Chapman University and a bachelor’s from University of Southern California.
