Home mortgage firm plans area expansion

Real Estate Weekly, Feb 18, 1998

The Manhattan offices of Home Mortgage Acceptance Corp. (HMAC) make a statement about what one of the top five mortgage brokerage companies in New York City is about the minute you step into a marble reception area, continue onto one of the elegantly-appointed conference rooms and, perhaps, share a cup of coffee or tea from a silver service before the business at hand begins.

As a client, the business at hand will probably be the arrangement of a mortgage for a cooperative apartment or condominium in Manhattan, where the firm offers a high level of expertise. Or, perhaps, a first or second home in Connecticut, the state in which, along with New York, HMAC is presently licensed, with plans for expansion to New Jersey (where they already originate mortgages) and Florida in the near future.

Whatever the business, the result is assured: The service will be white-glove. But then, in the actual business of mortgage transactions, the gloves will symbolically come off to offer the lowest rates available to the consumer, based on a decade of forging wholesale relationships with the most competitive lenders in the country.

Founded in 1987, a year before the stock market crash that heralded in the recession of the early 90's. HMAC has done much more than endure one of the most tumultuous decades in New York City real estate history. It has thrived, rising to a position as one of the top five home mortgage brokerage houses in New York which has generated more than $1 billion in residential and commercial loans in a decade.

But this firm is not resting on its laurels. Instead, partners and managing directors Gordon Shanks, 41, and Daniel Levitan, 46, are gunning for even stronger growth with the addition of a third partner, Seth Cohen, 29. Cohen, partner, owner and managing director, joined the firm in December of 1997 from New York Mortgage Corp., where he was a senior loan officer and top originator who built and managed a division that generated over 40 percent of the firm's total revenues and propelled originations from $75 million to $200 million annually in just three years.

While at New York Mortgage Corp., Cohen spearheaded a foreign nationals operation - a lucrative and growing market for high-end New York metropolitan area real estate - within which he plans to expand HMAC's role through an aggressive marketing strategy.

He is a staunch believer that to successfully work with the foreign nationals market requires not only sophisticated international financial skills, but also the ability to establish cultural rapport to create a high level of comfort during business transactions. As such, he has surrounded himself with a multilingual staff that speaks Japanese, Italian, Portuguese, French, Spanish and Chinese. He even installed a phone system with a direct conduit for Chinese customers to reach a Chinese-speaking loan officer.

To Cohen, it is more than the just the ability to speak a language, such as his fluency in Japanese acquired while working for more than two years as a financial analyst in Tokyo, but also the ability to understand the subtleties of verbal and body language and the business practices of the customer's culture that makes the difference in creating a successful foreign nationals operation.

Cohen holds an MBA in finance from Columbia Business School and is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania with a BA in economics and a concentration in international finance from the Wharton School of Business.

Cohen joins HMAC's two driving forces, Shanks and Levitan, in charting the firm's next 10 years.

A top originator who services the firm's many financial contacts, Shanks' financial acumen has been a foundation of HMAC's fast-track growth. A graduate of the University of Virginia who also holds an M.B.A. from the University of Connecticut, Shanks began his career working for two Fortune 500 companies in the tri-state area. He entered the mortgage industry in 1986 when he joined New York Home Mortgage, leaving to become a founder, principal shareholder and president of HMAC.

He has been responsible for all phrases of operations, including sales, underwriting and processing, staffing, lender relations and new business development, and has worked closely with partner Dan Levitan, who has been a principal of HMAC since 1987.

Levitan, one of the top mortgage originators in Manhattan, has spent his entire professional career specializing in real estate development and sales in New York City. He built a career at Bellmarc Realty, where he was made a partner in 1988. As director of cooperative sales for Bellmarc, he was instrumental in expanding the company into one of New York City's largest residential brokerage firms by establishing and supervising the development of new offices.

It was in 1994 that Levitan joined HMAC full-time. In addition to his financial responsibilities, he oversees the firm's training program that was developed to support HMAC's objectives for accelerated expansion.

All three partners will be spearheading HMAC's next decade of growth. Together, the trio will expand HMAC into the affluent foreign nationals market, open HMAC Offices in other states, including New Jersey, where the firm already originates business, and Florida, and increase the number of mortgages HMAC places.