Business Spotlight: Over the Threshold

The four-bedroom Springfield colonial was not much different from Thursday to Friday. The walls and floors were still mostly bare, and the two car-garage was absent of vehicles. But something was different: The couple opening the door – Adam and Cindy Oed – were doing so for the first time as the homeowners.

Steve Kitrel, branch manager for USA Mortgage, a St. Louis-based subsidiary of DAS Acquisition Co., was on site as well. He had helped the young couple do everything necessary in order to take those steps over the threshold, from processing, underwriting, closing and financing. The company controls every aspect of the lending process in-house.

Since opening the Springfield office in September 2011, USA Mortgage has closed more than 500 mortgage loans with a cumulative value in excess of $50 million. Company officials say the first six months were spent carving out a niche in the Springfield market, and now they say USA Mortgage has found its place.

“You know, the first six months, people are just kind of checking you out, they’re dipping their toes in the water, so to speak,” says Kitrel, who has worked seven years for USA Mortgage and moved to Springfield in April. “They realize we’re here to stay.”

While all mortgage writers have worked through the regulations handed down following the mortgage crisis, USA Mortgage saw an opportunity in Springfield – a place that wasn’t hurting quite so much with respect to the purchase market and that hadloan officers who deserved better. When the loan officer-centered business – USA Mortgage was founded in 2001 by Douglas Schukar, a loan officer himself – arrived in Springfield, it took advantage of that talent pool, applied its business model and started to grow.

“Companies that are well positioned and can control the majority of the home-buying experience are going to reap the benefits, and it’s not so much the environment as the people they’ve got behind the scenes that are implementing their goals,” says Shawn Von Talge, president of the Missouri Association of Mortgage Professionals and vice president of Flat Branch Home Loans in Columbia. “If you get the right people on the bus, the bus is going to go in the right direction.”

However, it hasn’t only been regulatory change that has affected the industry. With the increased spotlight on the mortgage industry, people planning to refinance or purchase have changed as well.

According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, interest rates this month ranged from 2.6 percent for a five-year adjustable to 3.74 percent for a 30-year fixed jumbo – historically low numbers.

“You see ‘interest rates, interest rates, interest rates,’ everywhere – that’s on the news, that’s on television,” Kitrel says. “I guess people are more interest-rate driven than they’ve ever been, because that is what’s pounded into their head.”

Speaking in early October from his semitruck on the road in Council Bluffs, Iowa, Adam Oed, a member of the National Guard and a U.S. Navy veteran, says while he knew it was a good time to buy, it was more important to settle down in a house. He and his wife Cindy are expecting – they’re due in April – and after a deployment fell through, he had a tough time finding a place that would give him a loan.

“I was trying to find a loan for a house and it was becoming a real pain in the butt because I drive a truck and everyone considers that a commission-type basis,” Adam Oed says. “I get a percentage of my load, but my paychecks are pretty constant.”

Oed, who now works for Missouri Neon, says he wasn’t really worried if the interest rate was ticking up or down that day, and the couple settled on a roughly $170,000 loan, with a 30-year fixed rate of 3.87 percent, to purchase their Ravenwood home.

USA Mortgage’s Springfield branch currently draws about 65 percent to 70 percent of business from loans for purchases, mostly backed by the Federal Housing Administration and U.S. Department of Agriculture. Kitrel expects the office to close on another $30 million in loans this year and top $100 million in 2013. Companywide, USA Mortgage passed the $1 billion mark for mortgage volumes in September and finished 2011 with $45.6 million in revenue, according to Inc. magazine, which ranked the firm No. 1,633 on its Inc. 5000 fast-growth list.