REAL ESTATE : Shearson Lehman Again Offering Loans Through Realtors

Shearson Lehman Mortgage, which stopped providing loans through real estate agents in 1989, has resumed the practice in an effort to broaden the market for the company’s products.

For most of its 45 years, the mortgage firm worked exclusively through realtors, said Dwain Greer, executive vice president.

But as the residential market began booming in 1985, Shearson Lehman Mortgage began offering loans directly to consumers through a series of retail offices, Greer said. In 1989 it cut its ties to realtors to concentrate exclusively on retail lending.

The timing was not great.

By mid-1989, residential sales activity throughout the country plummeted as inflation-weary buyers backed out of the market. Mortgage lending firms began feeling the pinch.

But while the residential market remains sluggish, mortgage lenders have perked up considerably as interest rates have plunged below 9% in recent months, prompting a flood of refinancing as well as a slight boost in home sales.

Greer said Newport Beach-based Shearson Lehman Mortgage’s decision to restore its links with realtors is largely an effort to gain a bigger slice of the market.

“This will simply be one more way of exposing Shearson Lehman Mortgage to the consumer,” he said.

Greer said he now has five loan officers assigned to the realtor program and wants to expand it to 25 loan officers in Southern California before spreading out to other areas.