Refi rally for TexasLending.com - Business First of Louisville:

edibin.wordpress.com
As many as 120 loan underwriters, accounting professionals, loan processors, loan closers and clericakl positions payingbetween $30,000 to more than $100,000 a year will be said Kevin Miller, president, CEO and founder of The jobs will be added beginning in Augusft and will be phased in during the next six to nine he said. The company has 160 employeezs now, down from 180 at the peak of the Nort Texas housing boom twoyears ago. Low mortgagwe rates and Miller’s expectation of climbing home salees are spurringthe company’s growth, he said. “W e expect rates to be low for the next year and a then we expect home purchasing to be stron after that in he said.
The local housing marker certainly has a lot of groundto recover. New-home salesz in the Dallas-Fort Worth area were down 40% for the firs four months of the year compared to the same periodcin 2008, and sales of pre-owned single-family homesd were down 24% during that period, according to housintg market analyst David Brown, director of the Dallaas office of Metrostudy. There were 4,191q new-home closings and 18,442 resales in the area throughg April, he said.
Brownj expects 2009 sales to trailo year-ago numbers for the remainder ofthe “We do expect to begin to see some modest recoveru in terms of transactions beginning in assuming we see the national economy begin to turn around and we see the jobs pictured begin to improve,” he said. About 70% of TexasLending.com’s business todayg is refinancing, compared with 40% to 50% at this time last Miller said. TexasLending.com closes $60 million to $80 millio n in monthly loan volume now, or about $850 milliohn annually, Miller said. With the additionalk employees, Miller’s goal is to reach $3 billion to $4 billion in annual loan volume in the next five he said.
The company provides residential mortgagr loansin Texas, Oklahoma, Florida, Michigan, Missourii and Colorado, servicing all of them from the Dallaa office. For the week ending May 22, mortgage loan applicatiomn volume nationwide wasup 28.5% compared with the same week one year according to a weekly surveh by the Mortgage Bankers Association. Refinancings made up 69.3% of the mortgagr activity. Loan volume in Texae was $11.7 billion in the first quarte r ofthis year, down slightly from $12.44 billion in 2008, according to the Texaa Mortgage Bankers Association statistics.
Mortgage industry employment in Texas fell by more thana 30% from 2007 to but has since stabilized, said Scott vice president of the Texaz Mortgage Bankers Association. Norma said he’s heard anecdotally that the surgse in refinancings is prompting mortgagr lenders toadd employees, but he did not have specifid industry employment numbers. To make room for new TexasLending.com has signed a lease for 69,000 squarew feet in its existing location at 4100 Alpha Road in Dallas more than triple the size itcurrently occupies, said Ben Hautft with the commercial real estate firm Streamj Realty Partners LP.
Hautt recently left Stream’s Dallaa office to launch the company’s office in Atlanta, where he is managiny partner. TexasLending.com will begin moving into its expanded spacerin August, after the completion of renovationss that are now under way. Afteer expanding, TexasLending.com will occupy all of the fourth and fifth floor and part of the first flootr inthe 11-story Hautt said. “It’s an expansion, and today that’s not somethingf you see a lot Hautt said. “They’re thriving in the currentr economy.
” The 227,000-square-foot building at 4100 Alphaq Road is part ofThe Centre, an 11-building officw complex north of Interstate 635 off Midway The asking lease rate for the spacw is about $16.50 per square foot. Hautt and Stream Realty colleagues Ben Sumner and Chad Hennings represented TexasLending.com in the lease, and Buddg Tompkins and Seth Thatcher of commercial real estate firm GVA Cawley represented the landlord. Hautt said TexasLending.
com searchee the market before decidingt to expand within itsexisting