Wholesaling veteran Al Cristany has accepted a position with 360 Mortgage Group, Austin, Texas, one of the few lenders that funds exclusively in the broker channel.
Crisanty officially joined 360 last week. He comes to 360 Mortgage from Caliber Funding where he served as a senior vice president. He will carry the title of vice president, national production.
360, which has aspirations to go national, funded roughly $1 billion in 2010, and according to one official at the firm hopes to double that to $2 billion this year.
Cristany said he has built national operations before and weathered tough times. He worked for two once-major and now-defunct wholesalers: Capitol Commerce, and its later acquirer, American Home Mortgage.
Discussing the state of the wholesale market, he said, "Everybody's trying to stay alive - everybody is trying to carve out some wallet-share," he said. "We're seeing a lot of either past wholesalers re-enter, or new entrants into the wholesale space. We see this as an extremely good opportunity to build and expand on an organization that already has a very strong presence in key markets." (For the full story see the upcoming edition of Origination News.)
