Peter Norden, Chief Executive Officer, REMN-Real Estate Mortgage Network
NATIONAL MORTGAGE PROFESSIONAL MAGAZINE
NationalMortgageProfessional.com
14
SEPTEMBER 2010
seven years. I did everything fairly young. I ended up specializing in mortgage banking and ended up getting hired away as controller of a company named Globe Mortgage in 1977. I was a kid, and from there, I ended up staying at Globe because the chief executive officer of the company treated me like I was his son. He even introduced me as a son everywhere we went. Within six years, I was running pretty much the entire operation. I ended up staying 11 years which I certainly didn’t How did you get involved expect, more because he constantly left in the mortgage business? the carrot out there that I would be an I got involved in this busi- owner and it never happened. ness 33 years ago believe it or not. When I got out of After this experience, how did you college, I went to work for the account- grow in the world of mortgage ing firm of Touche Ross, which is now financing? Deloitte & Touche, and I ended up by I knew all of the banking relationships pure accident specializing in auditing and all of the trading relationships, and mortgage bankers. I just really grew to I became a trader. I was fascinated by love the business and then one of my the trading side of the business … I clients offered me a job to come in as loved it. I hired a lot of people in the the company’s controller at the ripe old accounting area, and I took over tradage of 22. I graduated college pretty ing at Globe and really did it all myself. early, at the age of 20, and had my first I am a hedger and trader. I’ve traded business when I was 12. I have been mortgages for 20 years. I still do it extremely entrepreneurial my entire occasionally for my personal account. I ended up running most of Globe life. Mortgage for a number of years, What was your business when you except for the multifamily side, as the whole residential side fell under my were 12? Selling stereo equipment … and not supervision. In 1988, I decided that I wanted to “off the truck” either. It was legal and legit. I went to college to get an run a company myself and the banks I accounting degree to give me the back- knew would back me. I did a 100 perground to run my own business—not cent leveraged buyout of a company because I wanted to be an accountant. I based in Atlanta called Old Town was the furthest thing from an account- Mortgage. We merged Old Town with a ant in the world. I just knew at a really builder-owned company in New Jersey First Builders Financial young age there were tons of salespeo- called ple out there, but salespeople generally Corporation, which was owned by the cannot run a business. I only worked for Kaplan Organization and run by Marty Touche Ross for two-and-a half-years Levine. We put the two companies and specialized in mortgage banking. I together and formed First Town. We was fast-tracking at Touche and actual- took Old Town Mortgage and First ly they told me I would be a partner in Builders Financial, and made First In 1999, he started Northern Star which eventually became Opteum Financial Services. Peter served as president and chief executive officer of Opteum until the company was merged with Bimini Mortgage Management. Presently, Peter serves as chief executive officer of Real Estate Mortgage Network (REMN), headquartered in River Edge, N.J.
Each month, National Mortgage Professional Magazine will focus on one of the industry’s top players in our “Mortgage Professional of the Month” feature. Our readers are encouraged to contact us by email at newsroom@nmpmediacorp.com for consideration in being featured in a future “Mortgage Professional of the Month” column. This month, we had a chance to chat with Peter Norden, currently chief executive officer of Real Estate Mortgage Network Inc. (REMN). Norden’s business acumen developed at the young age of 12, when, as he describes, he was in the business of selling stereo equipment. A graduate of Fairleigh Dickinson University with a BA in accounting, Peter began his career with the accounting firm of Touche Ross, now Deloitte & Touche, auditing mortgage bankers. He moved on to the mortgage finance side of things when he joined Globe Mortgage in 1977 for an 11-year run with the company. In 1988, Peter bought out Atlanta, Ga.-based Old Town Mortgage, merged it with New Jersey-based First Builders Financial Corporation and called the new entity First Town Mortgage, serving as the company’s chief executive officer and president.
Town Mortgage. Old Builders didn’t sound too good as a company name, so we used the name First Town Mortgage. Basically, the company that I bought did $1 million a month in business and that was it. First Builders did maybe $5 million a month at the time which was all built to build and nothing else. We built it up and nearly doubled our volume every year.
“…I feel that in order to build a quality shop, you have to have quality paper coming through the shop.” We built it up to about a $1.5 billion a year company, and at that point, we sold the company to Chase in 1999. We had a restrictive covenant with Chase where I couldn’t do retail for two years and I held up that agreement. When we sold to Chase they didn’t take any of our administration people, so basically, I started up the wholesale operation called Northern Star in 1999. Northern Star was a wholesale operation that was geared more toward sub-prime to match our ownership because we had an ownership interest in SouthStar Funding, which was a fairly large subprime wholesaler. We didn’t run SouthStar, but we did have the capital behind the company. My retail employees came back en masse to the retail division of Northern Star. We built First Town up and then brought in a large group from California to do wholesale and correspondent lending, and brought in current REMN Director of National Sales Joe Amoroso. Joe came on board as we were looking to buy a company in Connecticut that eventually became Opteum Financial Services. We were doing $1 billion-plus per month at Opteum, until it was sold to Bimini, a REIT (real estate investment