Hot housing market in Maryland attracts mortgage lenders from West

Daily Record, The (Baltimore), Oct 11, 2005 by James Mosher

It's like the California Gold Rush in reverse. Think of it as the Loan Rush.

The hot housing market in Maryland is attracting mortgage lenders from all over the nation, including the West Coast. The latest to boost its presence here is Novato, Calif.-based GreenPoint Mortgage Funding Inc., which opened an office in Owings Mills last week. The company founded its first Maryland branch in Silver Spring in June of last year.

We've seen our business in the Baltimore area grow extensively, said Richard Lynard, branch manager in Owings Mills. We want to be centrally located to take advantage of all that's going on in Baltimore, Carroll and Harford counties and elsewhere in Maryland.

The market's been great, said Thomas Shaner, executive director of the Maryland Association of Mortgage Brokers. I judge mostly by how difficult it is to get my members on the phone or schedule them for meetings. I can't get people to call me back. By that standard, things are great.

The refinancing portion of the mortgage business has slackened somewhat due to rising interest rates and a 6-year-old state law that forbids a broker from making a commission on a refinancing done within 24 months of the original loan, Shaner said.

It was a law created with the best of intentions but it doesn't help the consumer, he said. If I can't make a fee, I've got no reason to pick up the phone and let you know about this great new deal.

The housing market remains very strong although prices have leveled a bit, said Patrick Kane, executive vice president and general sales manager at real estate brokerage Coldwell Banker, who oversees the real estate market in Maryland, Washington and Northern Virginia. The rise in interest rates has slowed price increases, he said, easing worries about a bubble.

People have been predicting this bubble bursting for at least two years, Kane said. What was really needed was to let a little air out of the bubble. That's happened because of the interest rates.

He forecasts continued strong demand for housing and mortgages as long as we don't have a catastrophe politically or economically.

GreenPoint's Owings Mills office, located just north of Owings Mills Mall, has about 40 employees. GreenPoint is looking to hire another 10 in the near future, Lynard said. The company plans to add up to 50 more employees when it begins operating a GreenPoint Express operation out of the branch later this month.

We're definitely in hiring mode, Lynard said.

The Owings Mills site is also a regional training facility. Handling many new employees in a short period of time presents challenges, the manager said.

We're getting there, said Lynard. We're working out the kinks. Opening any new office is not easy.

GreenPoint deals mostly in residential mortgages. Its GreenPoint Express business specializes in institutional loans involving Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two entities created by Congress to facilitate home loans. GreenPoint Mortgage is the fifth largest wholesale mortgage lender, making $39 billion in loans last year.

The top four all lost market share, Lynard said. I'm happy to say that we didn't and we're growing. We're definitely making a more concerted effort in the mid-Atlantic and Northeast regions.

GreenPoint is a unit of Melville, N.Y.-based North Fork Bancorp, New York's largest retail bank and the 16th largest commercial bank in the United States. North Fork's total assets are about $55 billion.

North Fork bought out New York-based GreenPoint Financial Corp. last year in a deal valued at $6.4 billion. A manufactured housing finance business known as GreenPoint Credit LLC was sold off that same year. GreenPoint Mortgage, which has been in the mortgage business for about 25 years, got a new president and CEO, Steven M. Abreu, in April.