Nationstar Continues to Expand Servicing Portfolio

With its latest planned acquisition of mortgage servicing rights, Nationstar Mortgage LLC has secured its place among the eight-biggest U.S. residential servicers. If all goes well with its bid to acquire servicing assets from Residential Capital LLC — then its ranking will improve three notches.

Parent Nationstar Mortgage Holdings Inc. disclosed Tuesday that an agreement has been reached to acquire $10.4 billion in residential mortgage servicing rights.

The seller in the transaction: Bank of America, N.A.

The acquisition includes loans in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pools.

The Lewisville, Texas-based company expects the loans to be transferred next month.

Sister company Newcastle Investment Corp. will be a 65 percent co-investor in the transaction.

Nationstar already services 635,000 loans for $103 billion. Including its pending acquisition of servicing rights from Aurora Bank FSB, the BofA transaction will bring its servicing portfolio to around $176 billion — making it the eighth-largest residential servicer in the country.

But if Nationstar is successful in its bid to acquire $201 billion in primary mortgage servicing rights from bankrupt ResCap — Nationstar will replace ResCap-parent Ally Financial Inc. as the fifth-largest residential mortgage servicer in the country based on data maintained by Mortgage Daily.

Nationstar Holdings completed an initial public on March 8 at an offering price of $14. But shares have since climbed past $19 despite that U.S. stocks in general have fallen to their lowest levels this year.