Ishbia, during a live Facebook presentation, said Rocket Companies and Fairway Independent Mortgage Corp. are hurting the industry and he issued his ultimatum.

“If you work and send loans and send business to Fairway Independent or Rocket Mortgage… you can’t work with UWM if you work with those guys. I can’t stop you, but I am not going to help you help the people who are hurting the broker channel, and that is what is going on now. We don’t need to fund Fairway Independent or Rocket Mortgage to try to put brokers out of business. We don’t need to do that. If you want to do that, it’s your own deal, no hard feelings, but you can’t work with UWM anymore.”

Ishbia wants brokers to sign a pledge to stop working with Rocket and Fairway. He said the deadline to sign the pact is March 15. "So here is the question, 'Are you all in? Are you in or are you out?',” Ishbia reportedly said.

In an interview with HousingWire, Austin Niemiec, vice president of Rocket Pro TPO, said he’s spoken to many brokers who are “upset” about the ultimatum issued by UWM’s Ishbia, saying they feel “disrespected by one of their partners telling them what they can and cannot do.”

Niemiec added that UWM is attempting to “manipulate the market and have brokers swear allegiance to one company and literally give them financial penalties if they don’t listen to them. That harms their ability to compete, and it harms the consumer. Make no mistake about it, this was a move to benefit one company and one company alone, UWM.”