Taking a warehouse line and table funding our private files, or staying a pure broker

Ran the numbers on this over the weekend and I still can't get comfortable either way, so I'll put it to the room.

We closed 61 files last year, 44 of them investor deals on the private and bridge side. On a brokered bridge file we're getting paid roughly 100 to 150 basis points depending on the lender and how much of the fee the borrower will bear. Two of our funding sources have floated a correspondent arrangement where we'd take a small warehouse line, close in our own name, and sell the paper within a week or two. Their pitch is that the same file pays closer to 200 to 250 basis points because we're absorbing the closing and early servicing work, plus we control the timeline instead of waiting on someone else's draw desk.

What I keep tripping over is the other side of it. A line means covenants, minimum tangible net worth, quarterly audits, and someone at the shop who actually understands repurchase language on the sale side. Licensing for closing in your own name is a different animal than brokering and it varies state by state, so that's a lawyer question before it's a math question. And the moment we're the named lender on the note, our incentives stop being obviously aligned with the borrower, which is the whole thing I've been selling for five years.

The pure broker path keeps us light. Nobody can margin call a broker. But if the private-credit growth everyone keeps pointing at is real, the spread is going to be there for whoever holds paper for two weeks, and I'd rather be early than explain to my two loan officers in 2027 why we're still on 110 basis points.

Where would you land.