Distressed Mortgage Investor Looks to Build Single-Loan Sale Business

If you’ve ever wanted to be a distressed mortgage mogul, but don’t have the capital or fund-raising capacity to start your own fund, a Houston-based company just might have a solution for you. Oxford Funding Corp., a distressed mortgage investor that works in the so-called scratch-and-dent mortgage space, said Wednesday that it will begin offering “individual performing mortgage loans for sale to accredited investors.” The company, like many in the scratch-and-dent space, often looks to sell its loans on a bulk basis; a move towards individual investors has traditionally been shunned by most as too costly an exit strategy. It’s unclear if the performing loans Oxford is offering to individual investors are technically re-performing — meaning the company bought a pool of sub-performing loans and refinanced the borrower — or if the loans are, in fact, contiguously performing. “In an era of low yielding monetary investments, investors now will have the opportunity to own a performing mortgage loan at an attractive yield, backed by real estate collateral that has been valued at today’s local market prices,” said Ron Redd, Oxford’s CEO, in a press statement. Available loans range in size from $26,000 on the low end to almost $400,000 on the higher end, the company said. Available mortgages for purchase are listed on the company’s Web site. “With this mechanism we are now able to offer individual investors the same yields that our institutional investors get when they buy discounted loans from us,” said Redd. “We think it creates a win-win situation for our company and our new individual clients.” Oxford said that complete due diligence packages are available with each file when a purchaser agrees to buy a loan, and each package contains an up-to-date property valuation by virtue of an independent third party report. “Investors will have an opportunity to do their own reviews before settlement,” said Redd. “This further increases the margin of safety because of updated values, complete loan histories, and the client’s ability to do a complete review before purchase.” For more information, visit http://www.oxfordfunding.com.