Mortgage lender Homeloans Ltd has sent out documents to 140 Refund Home Loans franchisees, offering them independent broker agreements.Homeloans announced last week that it had made a deal with Refund's administrators to buy certain assets of the failed franchise group, including its A$1.9 billion loan book.Purchase of the book will allow Homeloans to reinstate the payment of trail commissions to the Refund franchisees, which had been suspended by the administrator.Homeloans' general manager of funding and investment, Scott McWilliam, said the purpose of the acquisition was to expand Homeloans' distribution.McWilliam said he did not expect all the 140 brokers to come across to Homeloans. "Because the Refund business has been in administration for some time and the brokers have not been getting commissions, some of them have had to look for alternative sources of income," he said."But we are hopeful that we can achieve a significant expansion in our distribution network."Homeloans currently has around 25 branded brokers operating as mobile lenders, shop-front operators and employees. It also works with some non-branded loan consultants.The agreement being offered to the Refund franchisees is that they to operate as independent brokers under the Homeloans name. The Refund franchisees used Choice (part of NAB's Advantedge third-party mortgage division) as their aggregator and that arrangement will continue.Refund did not have any proprietary funding lines.McWilliam said: "We think this is a great opportunity. We can grow our branded presence and help get these brokers back to the level of business they were writing before Refund went into administration."The acquisition will take Homeloans' mortgage book to $7.7 billion. It funded the purchase out of cash reserves. The purchase price was not disclosed.