HOMEWARD BOUND
After leaving Pittsburgh seven years ago to chase his dream of creating tech-based companies in Silicon Valley, Matt Humphrey returned this week to announce that his company, San Francisco-based LendingHome, is opening an office in Nova Place on the North Side.
LendingHome — a national mortgage company that competes with traditional brick-and-mortar lenders by allowing customers to buy and refinance homes online — is expected to add 50 technology jobs in its Pittsburgh office over the next year.
“Over the coming years, we have the intention and plan to create many jobs both in our mortgage operation and technology jobs,” said Mr. Humphrey, who at age 30 was named this year to Forbes Magazine’s list of 30 under 30. “We are especially excited about the talent coming out of Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh.”
LendingHome, founded in 2013 by Mr. Humphrey and James Herbert, has originated $1.75 billion in mortgages over the past three years.
The idea for the business was born in 2013 when Mr. Herbert — who already owned a home — was having a hard time refinancing with his bank. It took 4½ months with three stops and starts. Listening to Mr. Herbert vent his frustrations, Mr. Humphrey realized this was the challenge he had been searching for.
The $8 trillion residential mortgage market was built upon a system in which mortgages are processed by hand, using stacks of paper and hours of human labor. They thought there was a way to make the process easier, faster and more transparent.
“We have basically built an entire mortgage company from the ground up using technology,” Mr. Humphrey said. “Instead of having physical retail stores and taking months to close loans, we’ve streamlined the mortgage process and brought it all online.”
The company’s target audience is firsttime home buyers.
Although LendingHome will have a physical location in Pittsburgh, the office will not be open for walk-in traffic. Mortgage applicants will need to go online or
call the company to apply for a loan.
LendingHome operates in 25 states, including Pennsylvania.
While there are more than7,000 companies that finance mortgages across the U.S., Mr. Humphrey claims Lending Homeis the only one that has built its entire techplat-form from scratch.
The company is similar to the heavily advertised Rocket Mortgage, which is owned by Quicken Loans. However, Rocket Mortgage allows customers to file an initial online application, then it uses traditional methods of mortgage processing. LendingHome has customers complete the entire process online.
“There’s a lot of competition, but not with the technology-first approach that LendingHome has taken,” Mr. Humphrey said.
The company has a total of 300 employees. It originates all of its own mortgages without going through another bank. However, all loans approved by the company are repackaged and sold on the secondary market to other investors in order to free up capital for new loans.
Mr. Humphrey, a native of Mt. Lebanon, fell in love with computers after winningan international programming contest at age 12. Hewent on to receive a bachelor’s in computer scienceand a master’s in business-administration from CarnegieMellon University after enrolling at age 13.
While at CMU, he started his first company at age 17 with two classmates. By 2007, he made his way to San Francisco and became a serial entrepreneur. One of his most notable successes was an e-commerce platform called HomeRun, which he founded in 2010 and sold for over $100 million within 18 months of launching it.
“For technology and everything I have been building, San Francisco has been great,” Mr. Humphrey said. “But Pittsburgh will always be home. It’s really great to be able to come home and build something special in the city I grew up in.”