Refi rally for TexasLending.com - Tampa Bay Business Journal:

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As many as 120 loan underwriters, accounting professionals, loan loan closers and clerical positions payingbetweemn $30,000 to more than $100,000o a year will be added, said Kevim Miller, president, CEO and founder of TexasLending.com. The jobs will be adde d beginning in August and will be phased in duringy the next six tonine months, he said. The companyu has 160 employees now, down from 180 at the peak of the Nortgh Texas housing boom twoyears ago. Low mortgags rates and Miller’s expectation of climbing home sales are spurringthe company’ws growth, he said.
“We expectr rates to be low for the next year and a then we expect home purchasintg to be strong after that in he said. The locall housing market certainly has a lot of groundxto recover. New-home sales in the Dallas-Fory Worth area were down 40% for the first four months of the year comparedf to the same periodcin 2008, and sales of pre-owned single-familyu homes were down 24% during that period, according to housin market analyst David Brown, director of the Dallas officw of Metrostudy. There were 4,19 new-home closings and 18,442 resales in the area through he said. Brown expects 2009 saless to trail year-ago numbers for the remaindert ofthe year.
“We do expecrt to begin to see some modest recoveryu in terms of transactions beginningin 2010, assuming we see the nationakl economy begin to turn around and we see the jobs picturr begin to improve,” he said. Aboutr 70% of TexasLending.com’s business todaty is refinancing, compared with 40% to 50% at this time last Miller said. TexasLending.com closes $60 million to $80 million in monthlh loan volume now, or about $850 million annually, Mille r said. With the additional Miller’s goal is to reach $3 billion to $4 billiob in annual loan volume in the next five he said.
The company providew residential mortgage loansin Oklahoma, Florida, Michigan, Missourio and Colorado, servicing all of them from the Dallasd office. For the week ending 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 Mortgaged Bankers Association. Refinancings made up 69.3%% of the mortgage activity. Loan volumre in Texas was $11.7 billion in the firsrt quarter of this down slightlyfrom $12.4 billion in 2008, accordingb to the Texas Mortgage Bankersd 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 Texas Mortgage Banker Association. Norman said he’s heard anecdotall that the surge in refinancings is promptint mortgage lenders toadd employees, but he did not have specific industry employment numbers. To make room for new TexasLending.com has signed a lease for 69,000 square feet in its existinhg location at 4100 Alpha Road in Dallas — more than triple the size it currently occupies, said Ben Hautt with the commerciao real estate firm Stream Realty Partners LP.
Hautf recently left Stream’s Dallas office to launch the company’ office in Atlanta, wherer he is managing partner. TexasLending.comk will begin moving into its expanded spacesin August, after the completion of renovationw that are now under way. After TexasLending.com will occupy all of the fourth and fifth flootr and part of the firsty floor inthe 11-story Hautt said. “It’s an and today that’s not something you see a lot Hautt said. “They’re thriving in the current economy.” The 227,000-square-foot building at 4100 Alphq Road is part of The an 11-building office complex north of Interstat 635 off Midway Road.
The asking lease rate for the spaced isabout $16.50 per square Hautt and Stream Realty colleagues Ben Sumnef and Chad Hennings represented TexasLending.com in the and Buddy Tompkins and Seth Thatcher of commercial real estate firm GVA Cawley represente the landlord. Hautt said TexasLending.com searched the markert before deciding to expane within itsexisting building.