Fannie Mae has extended its contract with Lenders One Mortgage Cooperative as a preferred investor.

Lenders One is a national alliance of mortgage bankers, correspondent lenders, and suppliers of mortgage products and services. The organization says continuing its preferred investor relationship with Fannie ensures that cooperative members selling to the GSE have access to more competitive pricing and technology than they would working with Fannie Mae independently.

“Lenders One fosters several preferred investor relationships, such as this one with Fannie Mae, to improve members’ secondary market performance,” said Scott Stern, Lenders One CEO.

The organization explained that this relationship provides several key advantages to Lenders One members, including quick funding and superior secondary market execution, which the cooperative says is paramount in the current environment.

According to Lenders One, Fannie Mae also benefits from the contract renewal, specifically in being able to better penetrate the market through direct contact with the cooperative’s members, as well as minimize the costs associated with originating that production.

Fannie Mae has been working with Lenders One for eight years, and is the only GSE in the cooperative’s network of preferred investors.

Lenders One was established in 2000 and is based in St. Louis. With more than 150 members originating $77 billion in mortgage loans for 2009, the Lenders One alliance ranks as the third largest retail mortgage originator in the United States.