Pontiac’s United Wholesale Mortgage to hire 500 new workers — no experience necessary

Even amid the current slump in the mortgage business that has caused lenders to downsize, Pontiac-based United Wholesale Mortgage is looking to hire more workers — 500 more.

The nation's No. 1 mortgage lender by volume is hosting walk-in job interviews from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at its headquarters at 585 South Blvd. East in Pontiac. The company is hiring for a variety of entry-level and higher positions, including in underwriting, sales and IT.

No previous mortgage industry experience is required and many positions don't require four-year degrees. The positions are for in-person work.

UWM says it plans to hire the 500 workers over the next three months. The hiring would increase the company's long-term headcount, a spokesperson said, not just replace those workers who ordinarily leave during a year for various reasons.

Lenders in Michigan and nationwide have generally been reducing headcount since higher interest rates last year brought an end to the 2020-21 mortgage industry boom. The boom was prompted by Federal Reserve actions at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic that produced historically low interest rates and a resulting surge in homes sales and mortgage refinancing activity.

For this year, mortgage originations in the U.S. are forecast to be down nearly 18% from 2022 and 58% down from 2021, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Metro Detroit is a power center in the mortgage industry and home to the nation's top two lenders: UWM and Detroit-based Rocket Mortgage.

So for mortgage-industry job seekers, Saturday's jobs fair is a bright spot in what has been a rough last couple of months.

In late January, the new owner of Flagstar Bank in Troy laid off several hundred workers when restructuring the bank's mortgage division.

More: Rocket Companies and United Wholesale Mortgage shed thousands of jobs

More: Gilbert's Rocket Companies reports first quarterly loss since going public

And struggling Ann Arbor-based Home Point Capital last week announced it was selling most of its business to Tucson, Ariz.-based The Loan Store. Of the roughly 500 Home Point employees, about 100 will move over to The Loan Store, a spokesperson said. (About 120 of the 500 Home Point workers were based in Michigan.)

UWM reported about 6,000 total employees at the end of 2022, down from 8,000 employees a year earlier. Rocket Mortgage's corporate parent, Rocket Companies, reported about 18,500 employees, down from 26,000 a year earlier.

Now the good news: Mortgage lending typically goes up in the spring with the start of homebuying and selling season.

“The uptick in volume provides opportunity," Laura Lawson, UWM's chief people officer, said in an interview this week.

Many executives at metro Detroit mortgage companies began their careers with zero prior experience in the industry and still rose up the ranks.

One UWM executive, Giuseppe Lucido, had worked in restaurants and bars throughout high school and college. Shortly after graduating from Oakland University in December 2012, he waited on a couple whose son had recently started at UWM, which was then known as United Shore.

At the time, Lucido was looking for a job in banking. The couple wrote the name of the company where their son worked on a napkin.

“So I went home, sent my resume in and got an interview," Lucido recalled this week.

Lucido was hired. He started off in an entry-level underwriting position. Then he spent a year as a "business specialist" working on projects, and in 2017 was promoted to his first managerial position as a team lead. Next, he rose to become a division lead, overseeing about 100 people.

His next step was becoming a vice president in 2018. Meanwhile, UWM as a company continued to grow and became the top wholesale mortgage lender, which is underwriting loans for independent mortgage brokers. (It did not become the No. 1 overall mortgage lender until the second half of 2022.)

Lucido, now 32, has been a senior vice president of operations since late 2019, in charge of 1,500 to 2,000 people.

Of the vice presidents who directly report to him, he said none had prior mortgage industry experience before UWM and just one had a traditional white-collar financial services industry leadership background with an MBA degree. And they are relatively young, generally between age 27 and 32.

More information about the Saturday jobs event can be found at uwmcareers.com

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: United Wholesale Mortgage looks to hire 500 workers