Freedom Mortgage recently broke into the top 10 ranking of mortgage originators and doesn’t look to be stopping there. Through the first nine months of 2014, Freedom produced $16.4 billion in originations, a 28.5 percent increase over the same period last year. That’s a huge increase at a time when overall mortgage origination volume dropped a whopping 44.2 percent. Last week, Freedom announced a deal to acquire Continental Home Loans, a retail lender focused on the New York metro market. Freedom officials said the deal, structured as an asset acquisition transaction, will boost its monthly production volume to $2 billion. That would raise the firm a notch or two in the rankings. Beefing up its retail presence was one reason ...