IntoHomes exec: Hard times perfect for national push

Tom Powell thinks tough times actually, he uses the word "bloodbath" are just around the corner in the mortgage industry.

A perfect time, in other words, for his Reno-based IntoHomes to undertake a farreaching expansion that's intended to create a national brand and a national flow of mortgage business.

The company's began rolling out its strategy last week with the news that it's lined up its first branch outside of Reno, acquiring Advantage 1st Mortgage of Springfield,Va., and named Scott Hardy, the owner of the Virginia operation, as its national director of corporate stores.

The Virginia company will be rebranded as "IntoHomes" in January.

Deals for five more partner branches are in negotiation, Powell said in an interview, and IntoHomes also is moving forward with plans to open at least 10 company-owned stores across the country in coming months.

It raised more than $3 million in fresh capital much of it from northern Nevada investors in 21 days this summer, but little of the capital will be used to acquire branch locations.

Instead, Powell said, IntoHomes looks to make acquisitions for shares of its preferred stock, holding out the potential of a windfall if the company's expansion is successful and it's either acquired or goes public.

The offer is likely to look pretty good to hometown mortgage brokers, Powell said, as the industry faces the likelihood of tighter regulation as lawmakers begin hearing from borrowers who've been burned in the industry's boom years.

The deal that IntoHomes offers is this: The Reno company will handle back-office headaches, including regulatory compliance, for the partner offices it acquires.

IntoHomes has made a six-figure investment in backoffice software to handle the complexities of mortgage lending in all 50 states.

The partner offices also get the benefit of IntoHomes' work to build a national brand name.

In turn, IntoHomes gets a stronger stream of business.And that's where the $3 million in capital it raised this summer comes in.

That's enough to support about $100 million a month in mortgage lending as IntoHomes underwrites loans, packages them and sells them off to big institutions.

But to make the move from a mortgage broker a company that prospects customers and handles the paperwork to a mortgage banker that is funding the loans, IntoHomes also needs to attract executive talent.

Again, Powell said, the bad times he sees just around the corner in the industry will prove helpful to the company's plan.

High-powered executives from some of the nation's biggest lenders see the arrival of a slowdown, expect layoffs in the executive suite and are looking for new opportunities.

While IntoHomes isn't ready to make public announcements of its new hires, Powell said it's attracting the talent it needs to build the company into a national player.

"We're going after the best of the best," he said."Great people attract great people."

A key job for the executive team, Powell said, will be the development of the mortgage stores, the staff of which he envisions as salaried professional financial advisors rather than commission-driven mortgage brokers.

"We think that will be the win on Wall Street," he said.

The company also will be strengthening a wholesale lending operations as well as an equity lending group to handle other deals that may come along.

The impetus to make the national push, Powell said, arose in conversations about the future of the seven-year-old company.

IntoHome board members Bob Barone, a key figure in the revitalization and sale of Comstock Bank, and Jesse Haw, a developer with interests in Spanish Springs, encouraged Powell to think bigger.

"We could stay in a small market and be very good in a small market," Powell said.

"But we started to ask,'What if?'"