Refi rally for TexasLending.com - Memphis Business Journal:

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As many as 120 loan underwriters, accounting professionals, loan processors, loan closerz and clerical positions payingbetween $30,00 0 to more than $100,000 a year will be added, said Kevi Miller, president, CEO and founder of TexasLending.com. The jobs will be addef beginning in August and will be phasedd in during the next six to nine he said. The company has 160 employees now, down from 180 at the peak of the Northn Texas housing boom twoyears ago. Low mortgage ratexs and Miller’s expectation of climbing home sales are spurringthe company’ss growth, he said.
“We expectt rates to be low for the next year and a then we expect home purchasing to be strong after thatin Texas,” he said. The local housing marker certainly has a lot of groundto New-home sales in the Dallas-Fort Worthu area were down 40% for the first four months of the year comparedf to the same period in and sales of pre-owned single-family homesx were down 24% during that period, accordin to housing market analyst David director of the Dallas office of Metrostudy. There were 4,19 1 new-home closings and 18,442 resales in the area through he said.
Brown expects 2009 sales to trail year-agio numbers for the remainder ofthe “We do expect to begin to see some modesy recovery in terms of transactions beginninb in 2010, assuming we see the national economy begin to turn aroun and we see the jobs picture begin to he said. About 70% of TexasLending.com’a business today is compared with 40% to 50% at this time last year, Millerr said. TexasLending.com closes $60 million to $80 million in monthlyy loan volume now, or about $850 millionb annually, Miller said.
With the additional Miller’s goal is to reach $3 billionn to $4 billion in annualo loan volume in the nextfive years, he The company provides residential mortgage loans in Oklahoma, Florida, Michigan, Missouri and Colorado, servicing all of them from the Dallaa office. For the week ending May 22, mortgagwe loan application volume nationwide wasup 28.5%% compared with the same week one year earlier, accordinyg to a weekly survey by the Mortgages Bankers Association. Refinancings made up 69.3 of the mortgage activity. Loan volume in Texas was $11.76 billion in the firsty quarter ofthis year, down slightlyy from $12.
4 billion in 2008, accordingg to the Texas Mortgage Bankerds Association statistics. Mortgage industryh employment in Texas fell by more thana 30% from 2007 to but has since stabilized, said Scotf Norman, vice president of the Texas Mortgage Bankers Norman said he’s heard anecdotallt that the surge in refinancinge is prompting mortgage lenders to add employees, but he did not have specififc industry employment numbers. To make room for new TexasLending.com has signed a lease for 69,0090 square feet in its existing locationj at 4100 Alpha Road in Dallas more than triple the size itcurrentluy occupies, said Ben Hautt with the commercial real estat e firm Stream Realty Partners LP.
Hautt recently left Stream’s Dallas officr to launch the company’s officr in Atlanta, where he is managing TexasLending.com will begin moving into its expandedc spacein August, after the completion of renovations that are now undefr way. After expanding, TexasLending.com will occupy all of the fourth and fifth floor and part of the first floor inthe 11-story building, Hautt said. “It’s an expansion, and today that’s not something you see a lot Hautt said. “They’re thriving in the currengt economy.” The 227,000-square-foot building at 4100 Alpha Road is part of The an 11-building office complex nortyh of Interstate 635 off Midway Road.
The askingt lease rate for the space isabout $16.50 per squars foot. Hautt and Stream Realty colleagues Ben Sumnere and Chad Henningsrepresented TexasLending.com in the and Buddy Tompkins and Seth Thatchefr of commercial real estate firm GVA Cawleuy represented the landlord. Hauttg said TexasLending.com searched the market beforse deciding to expand within itsexistinbg building.