Refi rally for TexasLending.com - Puget Sound Business Journal (Seattle):

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As many as 120 loan underwriters, accounting professionals, loan processors, loan closersa and clerical positions payingbetween $30,000 to more than $100,0090 a year will be added, said Kevin Miller, president, CEO and foundert of TexasLending.com. The jobs will be added beginning in Augusf and will be phased in durint the next six tonine months, he The company has 160 employees now, down from 180 at the peak of the Nortb Texas housing boom two years ago. Low mortgager rates and Miller’s expectation of climbing home sales are spurringthe company’ws growth, he said.
“We expect rates to be low for the next year and a then we expect home purchasinh to be strong after thatin Texas,” he The local housing market certainly has a lot of groundc to recover. New-home sales in the Dallas-Fort Worth area were down 40% for the firsg four months of the year compared to the same periosin 2008, and sales of pre-owned single-familt homes were down 24% duringh that period, according to housing market analyst Davir Brown, director of the Dallas office of Metrostudy. Theree were 4,191 new-home closings and 18,442 resales in the area througbh April, he said.
Brown expects 2009 salee to trail year-ago numbers for the remainder ofthe “We do expect to begin to see some modesyt recovery in terms of transactions beginningh in 2010, assuming we see the national econom y begin to turn around and we see the jobs picturde begin to improve,” he said. About 70% of TexasLending.com’se business today is refinancing, compared with 40% to 50% at this time last Miller said. TexasLending.com closes $60 million to $80 millio in monthly loan volume now, or about $850 million annually, Miller said.
With the additionalo employees, Miller’s goal is to reacgh $3 billion to $4 billion in annuao 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 Dallax office. For the week ending May 22, mortgage loan applicationj volume nationwide wasup 28.5% compared with the same week one year according to a weeklyg survey by the Mortgage Bankersd Association. Refinancings made up 69.3 % of the mortgage activity. Loan volumes in Texas was $11.7 billion in the firsg quarter ofthis year, down slightly from $12.
4 billioh in 2008, according to the Texas Mortgage Bankers Association statistics. Mortgage industry employment in Texas fell by more thana 30% from 2007 to but has since stabilized, said Scott Norman, vice presidenrt of the Texas Mortgagd Bankers Association. Norman said he’s heard anecdotally that the surge in refinancings is prompting mortgage lenders toadd employees, but he did not have specific industryu employment numbers. To make room for new employees, TexasLending.
coj has signed a lease for 69,000 squarr feet in its existingv location at 4100 Alpha Road in Dallas more than triple the size it currently said Ben Hautt with the commercial real estate firm Streajm RealtyPartners LP. Hautt recently left Stream’s Dallae office to launch the company’x office in Atlanta, where he is managing TexasLending.com will begin moving into its expanded spacsein August, after the completio n of renovations that are now undeer way. After expanding, TexasLending.cok will occupy all of the fourth and fifth floor and part of the first floord inthe 11-story building, Hautt said.
“It’sx an expansion, and today that’es not something you see a lot Hautt said. “They’re thriving in the current economy.” The 227,000-square-foot building at 4100 Alphwa Road is part ofThe Centre, an 11-buildinfg office complex north of Interstate 635 off Midwa y Road. The asking lease rate for the spac e isabout $16.50 per square Hautt and Stream Realty colleagues Ben Sumner and Chad Hennings representede TexasLending.com in the lease, and Buddy Tompkinss and Seth Thatcher of commercial real estate firm GVA Cawley representedc the landlord. Hautt said TexasLending.com searched the markeg before deciding to expand withim itsexisting building.