The pending acquisition of Two Harbors Investment Corp. would allow CrossCountry Intermediate Holdco to build the “perfect mortgage company” in the vision of founder Ron Leonhardt.

 “It actually allows us to control the borrower experience from start to finish,” Leonhardt said on stage during HousingWire’s The Gathering in Austin on Wednesday. “We are pot committed.”

The comments came one day after Two Harbors announced it had amended its merger agreement to increase the all-cash price CrossCountry will pay to $11.30 per share, up from $10.80 per share under the original March 27 agreement.

The amendment follows an unsolicited competing proposal submitted on April 20 by UWM Holding Corp. The Two Harbors board unanimously approved the amended merger agreement and scheduled a special meeting for shareholders on May 19.

Leonhardt said the deal “gives us that whole complete customer experience, and there’s a lot of financial synergies on the servicing and subservicing.” CrossCountry Mortgage (CCM) plans to compete with other subservicers once the deal closes.

The proposed acquisition fits into a strategy outlined by Leonhardt in 2024, after two challenging years for the industry, when the company had a “great balance sheet.”

“This is a balance-sheet business; if you don’t have a balance sheet, you can’t play,” he said. “So I made the decision to keep our servicing. I had a big bank offer me $1.3 billion for our servicing at the time, and I thought about taking it. I’m like, ‘Well, they must want it for a reason, so I kept it.’”

In January 2024, Leonhardt decided CrossCountry would look more like PennyMac and Mr. Cooper, as his team was doing all the “hard work” for somebody else to make the money.

What followed was a strategy to acquire mortgage servicing rights (MSRs), with the company taking eight months to build the team. CrossCountry reached a book of about $200 billion in owned MSRs by the fourth quarter of 2025, according to Inside Mortgage Finance. Two Harbors had about $162 billion.

“We are hopeful that we can get the Two Harbors deal closed; it gives us close to $400 billion in servicing. But, more importantly, it gives us control of the service, which also means that we can give a better customer experience,” Leonhardt said.

The deal also fits into the strategy beyond the recapture game. In 2022, CCM bought a nonqualified mortgage (non-QM) platform, which Leonhardt said has reached more than $10.5 billion in securitizations.

“I don’t think you can count on origination income solely to make money,” he said. “So, we have servicing income, we have asset management, and origination is going to feed both of those arms, which means I can get fairly aggressive on pricing to keep driving originations.”

While its focus remains on the retail channel, CCM’s strategy also emphasizes retaining servicing amid a less fragmented industry. But Leonhardt said the previous model of selling MSRs still works for many players.

“When I started my company, you could get a 20-to-one leverage ratio,” Leonhardt said. “It’s significantly harder to enter, especially a retail model, as far as net worth requirements … and it doesn’t matter how big you are. My costs go up every year, so there are significant barriers to make that jump. I started off as a two-man shop and worked all the way up. I don’t really think that opportunity is there.”