In the spring of 2005 the residential finance industry reached a quiet milestone. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), mortgage bankers and brokers employed a record half-a-million workers. Of that amount mortgage/non-mortgage broker employment totaled 126,600 jobs and real estate credit professionals (mortgage bankers and related firms) accounted for 375,100 full-time positions, bringing total industry employment to 501,700.

Four years ago about 350,000 workers made their livelihoods off of mortgages. It would seem that the future of mortgage banking/brokering looks bright. Residential production is expected to reach $2.8 trillion in 2005, with $2.6 trillion or so anticipated for next year. Interestingly, more people are employed in the industry than back in 2003 when lenders funded a record $3.9 trillion in loans.

The hottest sector in residential finance continues to be the non-conforming niche, especially subprime, 'alt-A' and interest-only products. Loan brokers tend to play a greater role in the non-conforming market. Non-prime products continue to gain market share and account for a growing piece of the overall origination pie, according to figures compiled by National Mortgage News for this edition of the Mortgage Industry Directory.

The Contact Names in this Chapter

In this chapter we list contact names and telephone numbers for the nation's top 200 mortgage lenders. In the previous edition of this book we listed information on the top 100 firms. We increased the firms and contact names in response to readers who told us they want as many names as possible.

As we've noted before, mortgage banking is still a "people" business. Technological advances have changed the way lending professionals do their jobs but it hasn't changed the basic fact that funding loans is a person-to-person endeavor. And it hasn't altered the secondary market either. A human being (or several) still makes the basic decision of which investor/funder a company sells its loans to.

A day doesn't go by at National Mortgage News and our sister publications that someone doesn't call our switchboard looking for a list of top executives, production chiefs, loan officers, account executives, servicing chiefs, technology contacts, or loan brokers.

How did we compile these names? We asked for the names on our annual surveys, but many firms did not want to disclose that information so we then went to the Internet, using Google and other search engines. We also cross-checked the information against our subscriber lists and with attendee lists available through the Mortgage Bankers Association. Chances are the information is somewhat flawed and for that we apologize.

Why is the information not perfect? As some of you already know, mortgage professionals tend to move around a great deal. When production booms (as it has the past three years) loan officers, brokers and AEs chase the highest pay check. It's hard to blame them, but job hopping and shoping can make tracking individuals a difficult task.

We present the names of individuals in this chapter on an "as is" basis. Unfortunately, for some firms finding the names of their employees was a very difficult task. Certain privately-held firms treasure their privacy and we respect that. If you spot a mistake or change in position or company, please let us know. We'll try to update this database as part of the eMID in late 2005 — Paul.Muolo@SourceMedia.com.