Over 70 mortgage lenders and brokers made the cut on Inc. Magazine’s list of the 5,000 fastest growing companies in America for 2021.
To grace the list, a business, which must be privately held and based in the U.S., had to have generated revenue by March 31, 2017, making at least $100,00 that year. Additionally, a business had to meet a minimum revenue threshold of $2 million in 2020.
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Not surprisingly, the top mortgage lenders on the list were all tech-focused companies, leveraging in house and third-party solutions to simplify lending transactions.
Nationwide Mortgage Bankers was the highest ranked mortgage lender on the list, filling spot 117. The New York-based retail lender, which offers agency and non-agency products, experienced a 3,520% three-year growth rate.
According to Jodi Hall, president of NMB, the rapid growth of the company has been spurred by “best-in-class technology.”
“Robotic process automation, an in-house marketing team, and an incredible point of sale experience is just the beginning of the value NMB brings to the table,” Hall said.
NXT Mortgage Company, a Texas-based lender, trailed closely behind at spot 169. The retail lender, founded in 2016, prides itself on being an employee-owned company and focusing on “people rather than profits”. The lender grew 2,496% in the past three years.
In an interview with HousingWire, Tyler Hodgson, president of NXT, stressed that the company uses third-party and in-house software to simplify the loan process for both clients and its team members.
Hodgson, a veteran, noted that the company is still adding more LOs and personnel.
Simplify Home Loans came in third among mortgage lenders, grabbing spot 192. The Utah-based company, founded in 2016, grew by 2,225% in the past three years, according to Inc. Magazine. The lender is licensed in 17 states and specializes in VA loans.
To round out the top five, Statewide Funding, a California-based lender, snagged fourth place, with a 1,531% growth rate over three years; retail lender InstaMortgage (recently rebranded from Arcus Lending) grabbed fifth place, coming in at 394 place. In 2017, InstaMortgage also landed on Inc. 500 list of the fastest-growing private companies in America.
Shashank Shekhar, president of InstaMortgage, said that the company’s focus is on speed and predictability, which warranted the company’s recent name change.
Shekhar said that 2020 “showed us that the back-end is still a huge struggle, so when the volume went up the turn times went from 30 to 40 days to three to fourth months because as an industry we don’t have the backend to scale up and down quickly.” In the next 12 months, the company plans to automate 50% of processes from application to post-closing.
Keystone Funding, Princeton Mortgage, EasyKnock (which offers a sale-leaseback program for borrowers), Kwik Mortgage Corporation, Princeton Mortgage, LoanFlight Lending, Lending Heights, Neighborhood Loans, Oakdale Mortgage and RWM Home Loans all made the top 1,000.
The complete HousingWire list of the fastest growing mortgage lending and brokerage companies on the Inc. 5000 list can be found here:
The Inc. 5000 ranks America’s top private companies by median growth, total revenue and jobs added. To qualify, companies must have generated revenue by March 31, 2017 and made at least $100,000 in revenue that year, have a minimum revenue threshold of $2 million in 2020 and be privately held, based in the U.S. and independently owned. Companies submit their revenue figures, and Inc. asks for verification of both the 2017 and the
