Top-producing loan officer Dave Medina and his team at the Temecula, California-based branch have left Fairway Independent Mortgage to join Movement Mortgage.
The move, which marks the start of Movement’s branch partnership strategy, comes four months after the South Carolina-based lender hired two top executives away from Fairway.
“In the 20 years that I’ve been doing this business, I’ve only moved companies once, and that was when the company sold the mortgage division to another,” Medina said in an interview with HousingWire. “Outside of just doing mortgages, I want to be part of something bigger and Movement had some opportunities for me to get involved with national coaching.”
Spokespersons for Fairway and Movement Mortgage did not respond to requests for comment on Thursday.
Medina, who had been at Fairway since April 2017, said his team’s production is about $100 million annually. His branch includes Medina, four loan originators and two support staffers. Medina said that his personal production, which was about $60 million in 2021, declined to $45 million last year.
“My new responsibilities involve my production, growing and managing our branch location in Temecula and the goal of building additional market centers or branches throughout the country,” Medina said.
South Carolina-based Movement built a war chest over the last couple of years when its volumes boomed due to low mortgage rates. The company has used the cash to acquire new businesses, such as the indie retail lender Mortgage Network and the brokerage Superior Rate Mortgage of New England.
Another strategy, which starts with Medina’s team, is to partner with branches across the country.
“Dave will be the first office in our new branch partnership model, and he will be involved in our national coaching platform,” Dennis Hueman, regional vice president at Movement Mortgage, wrote in a post on social media.
According to Medina, the branch partnership model “is new to Movement but certainly not to the industry.” It gives branch managers more autonomy in managing staff and requires financial responsibility. It’s a more entrepreneurial style, but compensation follows the traditional model at retail lenders.
Medina and his team’s transition to Movement Mortgage follow in the steps of Sarah Middleton and Kevin McGovern. The two executives moved from Fairway to Movement in August 2022 to boost the lender’s growth and develop its distributed retail sales team.
Middleton, a 34-year mortgage industry veteran, was named to the new position of chief growth officer. McGovern was named director of coaching and is responsible for creating a coaching platform for Movement.
Wisconsin-based Fairway, ranked No. 12 among mortgage lenders in America, originated $42 billion in 2022, down 33% compared to the previous year, according to Inside Mortgage Finance figures. Meanwhile, Movement originated $23 billion last year, down 20% year over year, enough to make the lender No. 24 in the ranking, per IMF.