American Home Mortgage: what happened, and where the loans went

If you had a loan with American Home Mortgage, this page traces exactly where it went and how to confirm who holds it today.

What American Home Mortgage was

American Home was founded in 1987 and headquartered in Melville, New York, on Long Island. It was structured as a real estate investment trust and led by Michael Strauss. By 2006 it reported just over $1 billion in revenue, about $263 million in net income, and employed more than 7,400 people. Its servicing operation ran out of Irving, Texas.

It is worth being precise about what kind of lender it was, because it is routinely lumped in with the subprime shops and that is not quite right. American Home’s book leaned toward Alt-A: borrowers with respectable credit scores who documented their income lightly or not at all. Stated-income and low-documentation loans, in other words, made to people who on paper looked creditworthy. That distinction mattered enormously to the company’s self-image in 2007 and mattered not at all to its outcome.

How it failed, in about ten days

American Home did not hold most of what it originated. It funded loans using short-term warehouse credit from Wall Street banks, then sold the loans on. The model requires that the credit lines stay open. In late July 2007, as Alt-A delinquencies climbed and the secondary market for these loans stopped functioning, its lenders demanded their money back at once.

The company disclosed it could not fund roughly $800 million in loans it had already committed to — borrowers who had signed contracts and scheduled closings. It laid off close to 90 percent of its workforce within days, many of them notified by email. On 6 August 2007 it filed for Chapter 11 in Wilmington, Delaware. The western division was reported to have been picked up by IndyMac Bank, which itself failed the following year and was placed into FDIC conservatorship in July 2008.

Where your American Home loan went

This is the question most people arrive with, and the answer is a chain of four transfers over five years. If you are trying to work out who to contact about a loan originated by American Home, follow it through.

1. November 2007Sold to WL Ross & Co. for $435 million. The private equity firm run by Wilbur Ross was the stalking-horse bidder for American Home’s loan servicing unit in the bankruptcy liquidation, acquiring rights to roughly $42 billion in mortgages.
2. 2008–2011Operated as American Home Mortgage Servicing, Inc. (AHMSI). Ross combined it with Option One Mortgage, bought from H&R Block, and a large servicing portfolio from Citi Residential Lending. Based in Texas with operations in California, Florida, and India, it became one of the largest servicers of Alt-A and subprime loans in the country. Many borrowers remember this stage, because the name barely changed.
3. February 2012Renamed Homeward Residential. Same company, same portfolio, new name.
4. December 2012Acquired by Ocwen Financial for about $766 million. At the time Homeward serviced roughly 422,000 loans with more than $77 billion in unpaid balances. Ocwen renamed itself Onity Group in 2024, and its servicing operations run under the PHH Mortgage name.

One thing worth knowing if your loan travelled that whole path: a 2013 settlement between Ocwen, the CFPB, and state attorneys general covered servicing conduct at Ocwen, Homeward, and Litton Loan Servicing. Borrowers who lost a home to foreclosure between 1 January 2009 and 31 December 2012 while serviced by one of those three were contacted by a settlement administrator. That programme is closed, but the public record of it can be useful if you are reconstructing what happened to your file.

How to confirm who services your loan today

Do not assume the chain above ends where your loan ended up. Servicing rights get sold constantly and independently of these corporate events. Verify rather than infer:

• Your credit report names the current servicer if the loan is still open. Free from all three bureaus at AnnualCreditReport.com. Start here.
• The MERS Servicer Identification System. Most loans from this era were MERS-registered. Its free lookup returns the current servicer.
• Your county recorder. Assignments of mortgage are recorded against the property and show each transfer in order. If the loan was paid off, the recorded satisfaction is your proof. Most Florida counties allow free online searching of official records.
• The bankruptcy docket. American Home’s Chapter 11 case was heard in the District of Delaware and the filings are public through PACER.
• The CFPB takes complaints against whoever services the loan now, and requires them to respond.

Why this page exists

MortgageQuote.com is the trading name of New Century Financial Mortgage, LLC, a Florida mortgage brokerage. We hold the internet domain formerly used by American Home Mortgage. Rather than leave it pointing at an advertisement, we publish this so that anyone who types that address finds accurate history, a clear statement that we are a different company, and the practical steps for tracing an old loan.

Sources

• Jones Day — WL Ross acquires the loan servicing unit of American Home Mortgage
• Ocwen Financial (now Onity Group) — acquisition of Homeward Residential from WL Ross & Co., October 2012
• HousingWire — AHMSI changes its name to Homeward Residential, 2012
• Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — common questions on the Ocwen settlement (PDF), covering Homeward and Litton
• Federal Reserve History — Subprime Mortgage Crisis

Written by the licensed team at New Century Financial Mortgage, LLC — NMLS #1967971. Reviewed August 2026.

Provided for general informational and historical purposes. Not legal, financial, or tax advice, and not a commitment to lend or an offer of any specific rate or term. Company histories, transactions, and regulatory actions are drawn from the public records listed above. Servicing arrangements change; confirm your current servicer directly rather than relying on this page.