Anthony Hsieh, founder and CEO of
loanDepot.com LLC, OC’s 16th-largest private company, is known for his yachts and love of deep-sea fishing.
He’s also a proud American and supporter of the troops; his 92-foot yacht Bad Company is used annually for War Heroes on Water, a charity event that helps raise millions for injured war veterans and their families.
The former founder of HomeLoanCenter.
com and Loandirect.com is also known for his posts on LinkedIn, where he has more than 42,000 followers.
The following are excerpts of those posts beginning in March, and touch on everything from the lending business, the U.S., to the pandemic and boating. For more on Hsieh, see our front page feature.
• Our industry does not have nearly the capacity to manage the potential upcoming demand for refinancings. At 11T outstanding and the highest credit quality and lowest LTV in history, with 60 to 70+ percent being in the money, the demand can outpace capacity by double or more.
• Talk about needing a bigger boat. This is the market I’ve been waiting for …. but it will create many problems and headaches
• See chart, this page: This looks like a nice chart for bottom fishing, this is what I would stop the boat for and make a drop to fish for bottom dwellers like groupers, and snappers. But … this is our market today thus far. A completely wild ride. This is unprecedented time, or in my language … Uncharted territory that may contain dangerous unknown ocean.
• See page 35 photo of loanDepot’s empty parking lot in March: Usually 2,000-plus cars are parked here at our California headquarters. Not so anymore …. Remote workforce is upon us, most of our 6,700 is working from home today. Stay safe and healthy everyone!
• Shame on those of you that are using COVID-19 in your sales solicitations and emails. This is a real crisis, both health and economic challenges that are truly unknown. Have some honor and patriotism. Shame on you!
• 6,936 FTE, 922 contractors, and a few hundred part-time employees. We made it through March. Thank you team! … Go loanDepot, go America!
• April: Tough week for our industry and non-banks in particular. Wishing all our industry friends, competitors, vendors, partners, Godspeed. These challenging times are creating more risks to non-bank lenders that I’ve ever seen. As for us, we are grateful that almost all of our 6,700 are healthy and working from home. This week we experienced one of our highest levels of new originations and fundings in our company 10-year history, we are proud to accomplish this from the safety of our individual homes.
• Nonbank lending is here to stay and here to help our economy and support housing. We are greater than 50% market share now, let’s rally the community and improve our industry image during these challenging times. … Every lender/broker matters, we all need to survive and succeed. It’s tough enough out there, let’s save the trash talking and support one another. God bless America!
• When Target or Walmart is out of toilet paper, it does not mean they lose credibility. We may not have all the loan products as an industry compared to pre-COVID-19, but we are still funding strong as an industry. What we do is important, what we do matters.
• My biggest complaint with WFH is the fridge and bar are too short of a commute!!! Starting week 5 personally working from home.
• Getting rid of 9 figures of high credit quality assets on the balance sheet for 90 cents out of the dollar and be ecstatic about it, sums up the market we are in. Onward … Figuring out the forbearance riddle now while managing the hedge of an unpredictable pipeline and mortgage rate markets. Truly fun times we are in, I’m sure my fellow CEOs out there are as wound up as I am. But our industry will overcome this challenge and come out stronger than ever before.
• Week 9 WFH. As much as I love fishing, working as CEO of loanDepot right now is more enjoyable and challenging. The fish will all be bigger when I get back out on the water, but for now I am having the time of my life navigating 7,100+ teammates and this not yet teenager of a company (10.4 years old) through this non-text book era of modern history. The old saying goes, find something you love to do and you never have to work a day in your life. … I’m living that now, in Lulu sweat outfits daily 🙂
• Family is good, health is good, business is good. Why is my anxiety level at the highest ever??? I’ve racked my brains around why I feel so anxious and grumpy, my assessment (which is probably not accurate) is that as CEO we generally try to look at least 6 months ahead. COVID economy makes everything so foggy that I can’t see the future and thus it feels like we are not making any decisions for the future. Just sit and wait until the fog clears. … Sitting stinks for a growth company. Hope everyone is staying safe and happy (not grumpy).
• June: After 10 weeks, I had to come see the office. It feels like Twilight Zone! Feeling sad although proud of the fact we are breaking funding records every month now remotely. I hope to see our team members here soon but at this point there are no plans.
—Peter J. Brennan
