Irvine-based residential mortgage lender Greenlight Financial Services Inc. says it’s found a sweet spot in the still-sour housing market.
The company is posting big gains in the number and value of loans it originates, adding new lines of business and planning to make more than 500 hires here over the course of this year. Those jobs would put its total at more than 1,000.
The company currently has more than 400 employees after hiring about 150 in the past four months, most for a new wholesale-lending division. The wholesale side, which started operations earlier this month, is Greenlight’s first move beyond working directly with home buyers. The company has held job fairs to attract new employees.
“By June, we want to have 600 employees,” Chief Executive Joann Pham said.
Next Wave
The next wave of hires is expected to come in the second half of the year. Those hires will include loan agents, processors, underwriters and reverse-mortgage specialists, Pham said.
Greenlight is expected to double its office space this year to accommodate the new hires. The company now leases the third and fifth floors of its Irvine Towers home.
“We’ve negotiated [two additional] floors in this building,” Pham said. “Eventually we’ll occupy four floors, with a total size between 80,000 and 100,000 square feet.”
Greenlight also is looking to expand nationally. It currently has regulatory permission to do business in 28 states and plans to add more this year, Pham said.
The company is known for the catchy jingle—“you’ve got the greenlight”—on its radio advertising.
It seems to be working.
The company originated 7,500 loans worth $2.1 billion last year, up 50% from 2010.
Pham credits the good quality of loans originated by the company for the rapid growth.
“A big percentage of our customers are repeating customers,” Pham said.
“These are mortgage-savvy customers taking out quality loans.”
Greenlight was set up in the early 2000s by Pham, who has been in the mortgage business since the mid-1970s. She spent a number of years at Costa Mesa-based mortgage lender DiTech.com Inc., now part of Minneapolis-based Residential Capital LLC.
Greenlight saw immediate growth “as the market cooperated” during the real estate boom that preceded the recent recession, according to Pham. The subsequent subprime mortgage crisis and market bust led Greenlight to scale back, but Pham said it’s been making headway over the past few years thanks in part to historically low interest rates.
Greenlight could be well positioned to reap a share of a recovery of the U.S. housing market. Several recent indicators point to some clearing of the housing backlog, with an increase in short sales, which now are deemed by many in the industry to be more efficient than foreclosures in dealing with distressed properties and minimizing losses for mortgage holders.
Beyond Re-Fis
Meanwhile, the low interest rates help Greenlight on its refinancing business, although the company is aiming for more as it adds staff and office space.
“We do a big volume of refinancing,” Pham said. “We now want to develop the purchase line of loans [as opposed to refinancing] and develop other channels of business.”
The company has recently tapped industry veteran Michael Petree to take charge of that push. He started earlier this month as president of the consumer-direct division.
Petree was most recently managing director of MP Capital Ventures LLC in Newport Beach. He served on the Mortgage Bankers Association’s board of directors, and spent time leading the consumer-direct lending division at OneWest Bank in Irvine.
