Michael Saleh, former senior vice president Rocket Mortgage He spent about two decades with the company, moving from a retail lending pipeline to a wholesale pipeline by starting an independent brokerage firm Zoom home loan.
Saleh opened the Livonia, Miss.-based company with Henri Houmani and Issa Al-Sheleh, who worked at Rocket before switching to wholesale pipe two years ago. Another co-founder of Zoom is Robert Lee Turfe, who comes from General Motors and leads areas such as marketing and human resources.
“I was a mortgage banker and rose through the ranks to the President’s Club, then to director of mortgage banking, senior director, regional vice president and most recently to senior vice president,” Saleh said. house line.
“Rocket went public and times changed. I needed to make some adjustments. This new chapter gives me the freedom and flexibility to run my business without any red tape,” he added.
Saleh said he left the Rockets on “amicable terms.” A company spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Rockets’ top leadership is changing. Last year, Jay Farner and Bob Walters announced their retirements, and the company named their predecessors Intuit and Paypal Varun Krishna serves as CEO.
Saleh said he was leading 250 to 300 people when he left the Rockets in mid-May. His team at Zoom Home Lending currently has about 20 loan officers, but his goal is to add 100 loan officers in the company’s first year of operation. Each LO closes 12 loans per month, with an ultimate goal of 15 to 20 loans.
“The LOs we bring in are people from other brokerages, people who want to start a new career, people who may have worked in the industry in the past, got out of the industry due to a lack of leadership and decided to come back to the mortgage industry. ,” Saleh said.
Saleh said Zoom Home Lending is licensed in multiple states and works with real estate agents to source leads. It offers traditional loans and government-backed loans through federal housing administration (Federal Housing Administration), U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (Virginia) and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) program.
Zoom Home Lending expects to achieve $100 million in mortgage loan originations in its first month of operations, with $65 million already being processed.
In the wholesale pipeline, Saleh aims to provide borrowers with “more opportunities to reinvest their savings” through more competitive interest rates.
For now, Zoom is shopping around with different lenders, but is primarily working with Rocket’s competitors United Wholesale Mortgage Company (UWM), Saleh said the company offers “very competitive pricing and support systems.”
