A Wilmington-based mortgage company now has a unified reach throughout the state and into South Carolina.

UMortgage, a nationwide platform that provides sales and organizational support for its member firms, announced this week that its branch in Wilmington has joined with UMortgage branches in Raleigh and Charlotte to create UMortgage Carolinas.

Patrick Stoy, broker and Wilmington branch leader, said Thursday that the new entity will provide more consistent, local and personal coverage for customers.

“We’ve been doing business all over the state for 20-plus years, and now we’ll have local faces who can go to closings and invite customers to [a nearby] physical location,” Stoy said.

While the Wilmington office now focuses on coastal customers in North Carolina and the Myrtle Beach areas, the Raleigh office serves homebuyers in the central part of the state. According to Stoy, the Charlotte office serves an area that reaches west to Asheville and Hickory and south to Spartanburg and Columbia. Mike Alberico heads the Raleigh branch; Alec Conrad is in charge of the Charlotte branch. Combined, they have 13 loan originators and a half-dozen support personnel, according to the UMortgage announcement.

Having a unified group of personnel able to meet customers where they are “makes [homebuying] a more personal experience for real estate agents and for borrowers; we can offer more face-to-face options,” Stoy said. “For most people, this is the biggest financial transaction in their lives, and we want to be there for them.”

UMortgage Carolinas’ personnel know their markets, so they can offer homebuyers local information on anything from insurance needs to reputable service providers or even good restaurants, he added.

Further growth is on the horizon, the three branch leaders say. As a whole, UMortgage doubled its production for a second consecutive year in 2023, the company’s news release stated. Its platform served more than 6,000 families nationwide with nearly $2 billion in volume. The North Carolina market is robust, Stoy said.

“We talk to people every single day who want to be here in North Carolina,” he said. “It’s better to buy today than to wait; the only way to build wealth, for the average person, is through real estate.

“Right now, the worst is behind us,” he added, speaking of mortgage rates, which he noted have peaked and are now declining gradually. 

“Rates in the [6% range] is actually the norm; this is a normal market right now, and people need to adjust to it,” Stoy said. “Property values are only going to go up. We still had property appreciation even when mortgage rates were at their highest.”

Stoy, owner of MC Mortgage Group, joined the UMortgage platform in June of last year.