Mortgage hiring stays active as 266 originators change employers

Mortgage lenders continued to reshuffle their sales forces last week as 266 loan originators changed employers and 1,823 individuals obtained Nationwide Multistate Licensing System (NMLS) licenses, according to RETR‘s new mortgage market intelligence report released Monday.

Venkata Rajaneesh Jandhyam, who originated $118.7 million across 206 loans during the past 14 months, joined California-based Tri Valley Home Loans LLC, representing the largest recent production volume among originators who changed companies. Sreedhar Seelam, with $111.4 million in production, also joined Tri Valley Home Loans.

Other notable moves include Ryan Stambaugh and Sam Hardy joining Union Home Mortgage Corp.; Andrew Russell, Robert Yusupov and Kelly Cordero joining CrossCountry Mortgage; Mohammed Shamsudin joining Rate; and Kalliope Orlando joining NewRez.

Among nonbank and credit union lenders, Peak Residential Lending posted the largest gain in producer volume at 11.09%, followed by Northern Mortgage at 5.67%, Hometown Lending at 4.59%, Compass Mortgage at 3.28% and RenoFi at 2.83%.

RETR introduces Agent Loyalty Index

The report also examined how consistently Realtors work with mortgage lending partners, finding that loyalty varies widely by state. Hawaii ranked as the state where agents are most likely to repeatedly work with the same lenders, while North Dakota ranked at the bottom of the list.

The findings are based on RETR’s Agent Loyalty Index (ALI), introduced at the end of June to measure how concentrated a real estate agent’s mortgage lending relationships are.

The index is scored on a scale of 0 to 10, with higher scores indicating agents direct most of their business to one or a small group of lenders, while lower scores indicate business is spread across multiple lending partners.

Hawaii posted the highest average ALI score at 5.64, followed by Nevada (5.54), Utah (5.49), Pennsylvania (5.47) and California (5.39).

At the other end of the rankings, North Dakota recorded the lowest average score at 4.11, followed by Wisconsin (4.24), Iowa (4.32), West Virginia (4.35) and Nebraska (4.45).

According to the report, the gap between Hawaii and North Dakota highlights differing competitive dynamics across local housing markets, rather than indicating that specific markets are stronger than others.

In states with higher ALI scores, Realtors are more likely to maintain long-standing relationships with a limited number of preferred mortgage lenders, making it more difficult for loan officers to establish new referral partnerships. Markets with lower scores tend to feature more diversified lender relationships, where agents are already accustomed to working with multiple lenders.

The report said the index can help mortgage professionals to understand “where Realtor relationships are concentrated can influence recruiting, market expansion, partnership strategy and sales expectations.”