LoansDirect’s Hsieh Eyes Loan Process
Ferragamo Marketing School Districts; Sperry Van Ness’ Genius
REAL ESTATE by Daniel D. Williams
Over lunch, a broker said I must really like numbers since my columns tend to focus on them. Sure enough, we love numbers at the Business Journal. But change is good, too. With that in mind, I decided to switch things up for this column, and take a look at some people behind the numbers. Here goes.
A red Ferrari peels around a corner and stops abruptly in The Pacific Club parking lot. Bounding from the car is Anthony Hsieh, a controlled bundle of energy. And as Hsieh (pronounced shay) works his way to the dining area, it’s like watching Norm from “Cheers” where everybody knows his name. Only Hsieh is fit and Asian.
Hsieh has set up the lunch meeting to pitch his latest venture,Irvine-based Home Loan Center Inc., a company he hopes will change the way consumers look at home mortgages.
Hsieh may have never taken a Dale Carnegie seminar, but the guy knows how to win friends and influence people. He eyeballs you while talking and adds your name to every sentence:
“Daniel, our goal is to secure a loan for every home. Real estate is a safer investment than the stock market, Daniel. If you bought a home for $400,000 six months ago, it’d be worth $500,000 today. Daniel, that’s a 25% increase. Let’s see Wall Street do that.”
The sentences roll past in hypnotic tones. By the time Hsieh’s done with the spiel, you want to buy a house, whether you need one or not. And I don’t. But I listened to Hsieh’s take on the residential market and why he thinks today, right now, is the time to buy a home,despite naysayers who contend the bubble is about to pop.
Sure, the job market’s down, the stock market’s way down and the economy’s anemic, Hsieh concedes. But real estate is going up like you wouldn’t believe, due to a shift in money.
“People have a need-to-buy-now attitude,” Hsieh said. “They’re scared if they don’t buy now, that home prices will climb out of their range.”
Hsieh’s earlier venture was Huntington Beach-based LoansDirect.com, an early online lender. At its height, LoansDirect-.com was lending more than half a billion dollars monthly in more than 3,500 loans per month. In 2001, Hsieh sold the company to E*Trade Group Inc. and took time off for his other passion: sport fishing.
He competed in tournaments around the world, seeking out that elusive, world-class marlin. But Hsieh said he found out something during his retirement.
“I have lots of friends, but they were all at work. I didn’t have anyone to hang out with,” Hsieh said.
So he got back in the game and formed Home Loan Center earlier this year. So far, he’s brought 70 agents on board, all of whom do their work online.
“We don’t have branches,” Hsieh said. “The computer is our home office.”
Hsieh wants to tap into the $2.1 trillion annual home mortgage industry.
“We found that 65% of homebuyers do some research on the Internet, but only 2% apply online,” Hsieh said.
His goal: make it easier for mortgage seekers to do their business online.
“We try to simplify the process for consumers,” he said. “We have them log on to our site and they answer about 10 questions about their particular needs and financial situation. Our computer provides them with a credit report online for free and gives them information on what they qualify for and at what rates.”
Home Loan Center closes loans in an average of 15 days from application vs. an average of nearly twice that going the conventional route, Hsieh said.
Go Deep
Former Los Angeles Rams quarterback Vince Ferragamo has formed a partnership with Los Angeles-based PACE LLC,short for Partnership for Academic and Community Excellence. The pact gives his company, Anaheim Hills’ Touchdown Real Estate, an inside track with certain school communities.
Ferragamo will subsidize the integration of the PACE school-to-home communications system in two local schools this fall, Mater Dei High School and Servite High School, and in return, he forms a relationship to market and sell homes in those schools districts.
The PACE system allows school administrators to use the Internet and other technology to create and broadcast phone messages to thousands of parents and faculty, informing them about school events, student attendance, school closings or last minute announcements or changes.
COMMERCIAL
There’s a genius among us. No, really, a genius. In the real estate industry no less.
Rich Steinhoff, a senior adviser with Sperry Van Ness’ Irvine office, was accepted into the American Mensa Society, a group of people who score within the top 2% of the general population on a standardized intelligence test.
“It has been a lifetime goal and I look forward to using the intellectual coaching I will receive to better advise and benefit my clients,” Steinhoff said.
Mensa fosters creative thinking for difficult solutions.
A resident of Laguna Niguel, Steinhoff received his bachelor’s degree in management from California State University, Long Beach, and a business certificate from the Graduate School of Business at the University of California, Los Angeles.
A retired Marine with more than 20 years in commercial real estate, Steinhoff and his wife Elaine have four children and nine grandchildren. No word yet on future Mensa members from the Steinhoff family.
