UWM CRIES ‘GAME ON’ FOR MARKET PLACE SHARE

Despite grumblings from some in the broker community, UWM succeeded in its bravado and ultimately surpassed Rocket Mortgage in the third quarter of 2022. It ended 2022 with an eye-popping 54% share of the wholesale channel in the fourth quarter of 2022, up from 41% in the previous quarter, and an 11% share of the overall mortgage market. Alex Elezaj, UWM’s chief strategy officer, said that the company’s been planning for an originations takeover for years. “Game On was a huge success, it was a great customer acquisition play and has a high retention rate for us,” he said. “We also did this with the intention to convince retail loan officers to come over to the wholesale side.”

HOW DID THEY DO IT?

Tension over the top origination spot has been brewing between Rocket and UWM for years. It’s a tit-for-tat feud between the Michigan rivals. With UWM rising to the

“[Recently] we released a new constructionto-permanent loan program,” Elezaj said. “We’re constantly revamping our technology to keep up with others in the industry and maintain our top spot. And those leaving retail to join wholesale will drive up our market share even more.” Wilner said that one of UWM’s tech highlights is a dual underwriting program. “You can run a single loan through two different automated underwriting systems,” she explained. “That way they’re saving time with only having to do one data entry that will give you multiple results as to which product offering is the best for your customer.”

Maintaining Top Dog

Now that UWM is king of the sea, Elezaj said it won’t back down. “Lifting the trophy is one thing, and maintaining it and holding it up is another,” he said. “And we don’t plan on giving it up.” Wilner said that UWM isn’t the type of company to pump the brakes. “We’re not giving anyone else time to catch up,” she said.

To prove this, UWM added an addendum this

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