Mortgages Accumulate at Arvest Bentonville
by July 23, 2001 12:00 am 90 views
Average home loan amounts are up in Bentonville.
Arvest Bank of Bentonville again dominated mortgage lending among locally based banks, despite the fact the number of notes issued by the institution dropped 22 percent from 1,855 in 1999 to 1,451 last year. But Bank of Bentonville’s dollar volume for the same loans was up 15 percent year-over-year, from $119.1 million to $136.5 million.
Jennie Hill, the bank’s senior vice president and real estate loan manager, said the average mortgage made by Bank of Bentonville in 2000 was $124,289. That’s up 7 percent from 1999 when the average was $115,700.
Year-to-date for 2001, the average is already up to $127,000. The increase could be fueled by national account managers for vendors to Wal-Mart Stores Inc. moving into the area and executives with the world’s largest retailer spending more money on real estate.
“We do have some loans in the $300,000-$400,000 range,” Hill said. “But when you average out the whole thing, the average is much lower.”
Arvest Mortgage Co., the Bentonville-based mortgage arm of the city’s Arvest Bank Group Inc., would be the No. 1 lender on our list. But because the entity doesn’t function as a traditional mortgage originator, but rather as a conduit for all of the Arvest banks to receive operational accounting an other local servicing, we have excluded the firm.
Arvest Mortgage did do 3,150 mortgages worth $340 million in 2000.
“Arvest Mortgage provides us with operational support,” Hill said. “It allows us to keep everything we do at the local level, including our decision making. We do offer servicing of our conventional loan products, but Arvest Mortgage gives us a pool of resources and technical experience that is unmatched in this market.”
Hill attributed the fact that most mortgage lenders’ loan numbers are down to higher interest rates in 2000.
“They were up for most of the year,” Hill said. “I think we’re seeing that year-to-date in 2001 we’ve done as many secondary market loans, which is our fixed-rate products, as we did for the entire year last year.”