Refi rally for TexasLending.com - Kansas City Business Journal:

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As many as 120 loan consultants, accounting professionals, loan processors, loan closers and clericao 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 Augustf and will be phased in during the next six to nine he said. The company has 160 employees now, down from 180 at the peak of the Nortyh Texas housing boom twoyearz ago. Low mortgage rates and Miller’se expectation of climbing home sales are spurringthe company’s he said.
“We expect rates to be low for the next year and a then we expect home purchasin to be strong after thatin Texas,” he The local housing market certainly has a lot of ground to recover. New-home sales in the Dallas-Fort Worth area were down 40% for the firsty four months of the year compared to the same periofin 2008, and salees of pre-owned single-family homes were down 24% duringf that period, according to housing marketr analyst David Brown, director of the Dallaas office of Metrostudy. There were 4,191 new-homs closings and 18,442 resales in the area through April, he said. Browbn expects 2009 sales to trail year-ago numbers for the remaindeer ofthe year.
“We do expect to begin to see some modestt recovery in terms of transactions beginning in assuming we see the national economy begin to turn arounde and we see the jobs picturer beginto 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 milliomn in monthly loan volume now, or about $850 million Miller said. With the additional employees, Miller’s goal is to reachy $3 billion to $4 billion in annual loan volume in the nextfive years, he said.
The compan y provides residential mortgage loansin Texas, Oklahoma, Florida, Michigan, Missouri and servicing all of them from the Dallas office. For the week endingh May 22, mortgage loan applicatiojn volume nationwide wasup 28.5% compared with the same week one year according to a weekly survey by the Mortgage Bankers Association. Refinancingss made up 69.3% of the mortgage activity. Loan volume in Texas was $11.76 billion in the first quarter of this down slightlyfrom $12.4 billion in according to the Texas Mortgag Bankers Association statistics.
Mortgage industry employment in Texaxs fell by more thana 30% from 2007 to but has since stabilized, said Scottf Norman, vice president of the Texas Mortgage Bankers Association. Norman said he’s heard anecdotally that the surgee in refinancings is prompting mortgage lenderws toadd employees, but he did not have specific industrgy employment numbers. To make room for new employees, TexasLending.com has signedf a lease for 69,000 squarew feet in its existing location at 4100 Alphaq Road inDallas — more than triple the size it currentlyg occupies, said Ben Hautt with the commerciaol real estate firm Stream Realty Partners LP.
Hautt recently left Stream’s Dallas office to launch the company’es office in Atlanta, where he is managingg partner. TexasLending.com will begin movintg into its expanded spacein August, after the completioj of renovations that are now under way. After expanding, TexasLending.coj will occupy all of the fourth and fifth floor and part of the firsft floor inthe 11-stor building, Hautt said. “It’s an expansion, and todahy that’s not something you see a lot Hautt said. “They’re thriving in the current economy.
” The 227,000-square-footy building at 4100 Alphas Road is part ofThe Centre, an 11-building office complex north of Interstatr 635 off Midway Road. The askingv lease rate for the space isabouy $16.50 per square foot. Hautt and Stream Realty colleagues Ben Sumner and Chad Henningsdrepresented TexasLending.com in the and Buddy Tompkins and Seth Thatcher of commercial real estatee firm GVA Cawley represented the landlord. Hautt said TexasLending.cok searched the market before deciding to expanc within itsexisting building.