American Home Mortgage

Founded in 1987 in New York City, the company became a publicly traded on NASDAQ in September 1999. The company moved its corporate headquarters to Melville, New York, on Long Island, in 2000.

Since its beginning as American Home Mortgage Holdings, Inc., it was engaged only in the origination and servicing of mortgages. Following its acquisition of Apex Mortgage Capital in December 2003, the Company became a REIT and changed its name to American Home Mortgage Investment Corp., the new parent company of American Home Mortgage and moved from NASDAQ to NYSE. The company has made numerous acquisitions since 1999 including Marina Mortgage of Irvine, CA, First Home Mortgage of Mt Prospect, IL, Columbia National of Columbia, MD, and retail branches from Principal Residential Mortgage, Waterfield Financial, Irwin Mortgage, and 86 Washington Mutual offices.

On July 31, 2007, the company announced that it can no longer fund home loans and may liquidate assets, putting its survival in doubt. The Melville, New York-based real estate investment trust retained Milestone Advisors and Lazard to help it evaluate options and advise "with respect to the sourcing of additional liquidity including the orderly liquidation of its assets." American Home's announcement shows how concerns about credit quality and homeowner defaults have spread beyond subprime lenders, which lend to people with weaker credit, to lenders that make higher-quality loans. This announcement caused its stock price to plunge 90% that day to $1.04 on the NYSE. "The chances are pretty high that the company either goes bankrupt or materially restructures, leaving little value for shareholders," said Bose George, an analyst at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods Inc. in New York. American Home has specialized in prime and near-prime loans. It has, however, made many loans that allow borrowers to produce little documentation of income or assets. It recently commanded about 2.5 percent of the U.S. mortgage market.

WARN Act Class Action Lawsuit

On August 8, 2007, Outten & Golden LLP filed suit against American Home Mortgage Corp, American Home Mortgage Acceptance, Inc., American Home Mortgage Servicing Inc., American Home Mortgage Investment Corp., and American Home Mortgage Holding, Inc. seeking to recover 60 days wages and benefits for former employees of American Home Mortgage who they contended were terminated on or about August 3, 2007 in violation of the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act. (the WARN Act). On December 14, 2009, the court approved a final settlement valued at $6.5 million for the former employees of American Home Mortgage.

As of May 5, 2013, no monies had been distributed as "The Trustee continues to work to resolve claims and pending litigation which will impact the timing of distributions to AHM creditors, including the WARN Class".Source Archived 2013-04-25 at the Wayback Machine

The warn act settlement was distributed in 2014.