Chase Manhattan returns to town

After a five-year absence, Chase Manhat-tan Mortgage Corp. has reappeared in the local market.

The return is led by longtime Springfield mortgage lender Mike Rankin, who Jan. 15 opened a Chase Manhattan Mortgage Corp. of-fice at 2432 E. Madrid. Rankin serves as retail branch manager and is in charge of seven em-ployees five here and two in Joplin.

According to Rankin, the return to Springfield came about when the company's growth and development division determined there were around 10,000 existing Chase loans in southwest Missouri.

Chase Manhattan Mortgage Corp.'s Area Manager Mike Holmes said it was that client base and the potential for further growth that lured the company back to Springfield.

"It's a market we just need to be in," Holmes said. "More than anything it's a growing market ... and doesn't look like it's going to slow down anytime soon."

This is the second Chase Manhattan Mortgage Corp. re-tail office opened in the region during the last year, according to Holmes. The company op-ened a Wichita, Kan., office last January, and Holmes now oversees four retail offices in western Missouri, Nebraska and Kansas. Other area locations are in Lee's Summit and Overland Park, Kan., the region's headquarters.

Holmes said the Wichita branch averaged $8.5 million per month in loans closed during its first year, and he expects the Springfield office to be very similar in volume.

"I would say it's going to be a mirror image of Wichita after its normal incubation period, which is normally three to six months to have a branch up and running," Holmes said.

Rankin agreed, and he has set his personal goals at that level.

"I'd like to see us within the next year possibly at $7 million to $10 million a month," Rankin said. "That's just a personal target."

Rankin said that during the latter half of January, his office closed nearly $500,000 in loans. He added that it will take at least six months for his office to get firmly established again here.

Rankin's local lending experience is in large part due to the 25 years he spent as president of Central Mortgage Banc-shares, from 1970 to 1995. During the next few years, he said, he served as president of the mortgage divisions at Union Planters Bank and Liberty Mort-gage.

Rankin said he was attracted to Chase Manhattan because of its programs and technological advancements. He said each loan officer is furnished with a laptop computer. They can send loan re-quests for approval on site and get responses "literally in a matter of minutes."

Also, he added, credit reports are ordered electronically, and loan officers can present different loan proposals with hypothetical situations to determine the best route for a particular client.

"It gives on-the-spot evaluations of the loan ... and the ability to ask what if' questions," he said.

The residential mortgage lending company left Springfield in 1996 "during a large turn-down in the mortgage origination business," Holmes said. Although he was not with the company then, he said, "It was probably a normal contraction of a branch that wasn't doing enough business.

Southwest Missouri

"There are certain demographics that have to be in place to make a retail branch work," he added. "Certainly the Springfield-Branson corridor has that with the population base and growth. That's why we want to be there."

Holmes considers the Springfield market to stretch from the Oklahoma border through Joplin to West Plains and down into northern Arkansas. "When you put that population base together, it's very similar to the Wichita base," he said.

Chase Manhattan Mortgage Corp. is a subsidiary of JP Morgan Chase & Co., which has 120,000 total employees and more than $700 billion in assets, according to Rankin. The mortgage division headquarters is in Edison, N.J.

Rankin added that there are branches in all 50 states and around 2,000 loan officers nationwide.