Freedom Mortgage Corp. is now ready to compete full time with the big boys in the rural housing market with its recent purchase of JPMorgan Chase’s rural housing business. The price of the deal was not disclosed. Freedom Mortgage’s newly acquired USDA origination platform kicked into gear on July 1, primed to serve rural-housing borrowers through its correspondent channel. Overall, the purchase would catapult the New Jersey-based nonbank to becoming the leading seller of USDA rural housing loans to Ginnie Mae. Chase Home Finance led all other USDA mortgage lenders in the first quarter of 2016 with $1.2 billion in total originations, which is 31.5 percent of all USDA-backed loans produced during the period. Freedom Mortgage was the largest VA lender and the second largest FHA lender in 2015. The acquisition of Chase’s USDA business would make Freedom the second largest, if not the ...