Movement Mortgage bringing 650 jobs to SC

Former Carolina Panthers tight end Casey Crawford is bringing his mortgage business – and 650 jobs – to South Carolina.

Movement Mortgage announced Thursday it will build its new headquarters in Lancaster County, investing $22 million, with ambitious plans to finance 10 percent of all U.S. home loans by 2025.

Crawford and partner, Toby Harris, started the business in 2008 with four employees in Virginia Beach, Va., – about the time the massive financial crisis began to rage across the nation.

“We got to start with a clean slate, which was nice,” Crawford said. The company had none of the troubled loans that hit many other financial institutions hard.

Last year, the company processed 25,000 government guaranteed loans – $4.3 billion in closed mortgages. More than 90 percent of those were for home purchases rather than refinances, Crawford said. The company is on track this year to process $6.4 billion in home loans, he said.

Movement has 350 employees at its Virginia Beach headquarters, Crawford said. He said a small portion of folks likely will move south with the company, but a large majority of the 650 new jobs will go to people around the Lancaster County area. The company has five years to create the jobs in order to take advantage of tax incentives from the state.

The greater Charlotte region was appealing to the company, he said, because it has a wealth of financial service professionals.

“There was a very healthy talent pool,” he said.

The S.C. counties near Charlotte have picked up a number of economic development projects in the past two years, including LPL Financial, which pledged up to 3,000 jobs, and The Lash Group, which expects up to 2,400 jobs. Lancaster County has landed up to 1,500 jobs in recent announcements from Red Ventures and Keer.

Movement officials picked South Carolina over North Carolina largely because of incentives from the state, Crawford said.

“Gov. Nikki Haley’s team worked with us very collaboratively to put together a tax incentive plan,” he said.

Under the deal, the company could be eligible for up to $53 million in state and local tax incentives.

“South Carolina’s booming manufacturing industry is not the state’s only economic strength – the Palmetto State is also becoming a top choice for corporate headquarters,” S.C. Secretary of Commerce secretary Bobby Hitt said in a statement.

A unique approach to loan servicing has helped fuel Movement Mortgage’s growth, Crawford said. About 70 percent of the company’s loans are closed in seven days, rather than the traditional 30 to 45 days, he said.

The company also reverses the traditional loan mortgage process by providing paperwork to an underwriter for approval at the beginning of the loan process.

While it’s a somewhat common story for potential homeowners to get to the day of closing and have to scramble around for more paperwork because of a hiccup with the underwriting, “we turn that process completely upside down and backwards,” Crawford said, by getting approval upfront.

Crawford, who played college football at the University of Virginia, graduating in 1999, played in the NFL with the Panthers from 2000 to 2001 and the Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers team in 2002 and 2003 before retiring. He has been in the real estate industry since retiring.

He leads the company with many of the same qualities he learned on the football field, he said.

“It’s a culture similar to an athletic team, goal-oriented,” he said.

The company was named as the fastest growing, privately held mortgage bank in the nation in 2012 and 2013 by Inc. Magazine.

Jobs at the company will run the gamut from human resources, accounting and marketing to a range of loan production roles. (For jobs, email Sean Wilkins at careers@movement.com.)

The new 104,000-square-foot headquarters building will be on 24 acres in the Bailes Ridge Business Park along S.C. 160 in Lancaster County, with completion slated for March 2016.

“I’m looking forward to having Movement Mortgage call Lancaster County home, for their new national headquarters. The economic impact of this announcement will be huge for our citizens, county and state, and I wish the Movement Mortgage team all the success as their transition to South Carolina begins,” U.S. Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C., said in a statement.

This story was originally published January 15, 2015 at 9:57 AM with the headline "Movement Mortgage bringing 650 jobs to SC."