Refi rally for TexasLending.com - Memphis Business Journal:

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As many as 120 loan consultants, accounting professionals, loan loan closers and clerical positionas 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 beginninvg in August and will be phased in duringt the next six to nine he said. The company has 160 employees now, down from 180 at the peak of the Nortuh Texas housing boom twoyears ago. Low mortgagre rates and Miller’s expectation of climbing home salese are spurringthe company’s growth, he “We expect rates to be low for the next year and a then we expect home purchasing to be strong afterr that in Texas,” he said.
The local housing market certainl y has a lot of groundto recover. New-homw sales in the Dallas-Fort Wortyh area were down 40% for the first four monthw of the year compared to the same period in and salesof pre-owned single-family homes were down 24% duringh that period, according to housing market analyst Davidf Brown, director of the Dallas officw of Metrostudy. There were 4,191 new-homwe closings and 18,442 resales in the area throughu April, he said. Brown expects 2009 sales to traio year-ago numbers for the remaindet ofthe year.
“We do expect to begi to see some modest recovery in terms of transactiond beginningin 2010, assuming we see the nationak economy begin to turn around and we see the jobs picturwe begin to improve,” he said. About 70% of TexasLending.com’s businesxs today is refinancing, compared with 40% to 50% at this time last Miller said. TexasLending.com closes $60 million to $80 million in monthlu loan volume now, or about $850 million annually, Miller said. With the additional employees, Miller’z goal is to reach $3 billion to $4 billion in annuao loan volume in the next five he said.
The company provides residential mortgage loansin Oklahoma, Florida, Michigan, Missouri and Colorado, servicing all of them from the Dallasz office. For the week endinbg May 22, mortgage loan applicatio n volume nationwide wasup 28.5 compared with the same week one year according to a weekly survey by the Mortgage Banker s Association. Refinancings made up 69.3% of the mortgagw activity. Loan volume in Texas was $11.y7 billion in the first quarter of this down slightlyfrom $12.4 billion in 2008, accordingt to the Texas Mortgage Bankers Association statistics.
Mortgage industrhy employment in Texas fell by more thana 30% from 2007 to but has since stabilized, said Scotrt Norman, vice president of the Texa Mortgage Bankers Association. Norman said he’s hears anecdotally that the surge in refinancings is prompting mortgage lenders to add but he did not have specifiv industryemployment numbers. To make room for new employees, TexasLending.coj has signed a lease for 69,0009 square feet in its existingt location at 4100 Alpha Road inDallaas — more than triple the size it currentlu occupies, said Ben Hautt with the commercial real estated firm Stream Realty Partneras LP.
Hautt recently left Stream’s Dallas office to launch the company’ss office in Atlanta, where he is managing TexasLending.com will begin movinyg into its expanded spacein August, aftedr the completion of renovations that are now undet way. After expanding, TexasLending.com will occupy all of the fourth and fifth floor and part of the firsy floor inthe 11-story building, Hautt said. “It’sx an expansion, and today that’z not something you see a lot of,” Haut t said. “They’re thriving in the current economy.
” The 227,000-square-foogt building at 4100 Alphqa Road is part ofThe Centre, an 11-buildint office complex north of Interstate 635 off Midway The asking lease rate for the space is about $16.5p per square foot. Hauty and Stream Realty colleagues Ben Sumner and Chad Henningsrepresenteds TexasLending.com in the lease, and Buddy Tompkinw and Seth Thatcher of commercial real estate firm GVA Cawlety represented the landlord. Hautt said TexasLending.
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