Vanderbilt, 21st Century to Add Servicing jobs

Hiring will be 21st Mortgage Corp. and sister company Vanderbilt Mortgage and Finance Inc., which recently agreed to purchase a $4 billion manufactured home loan portfolio from Chase Home Finance.

Chase’s choice to sell that portfolio followed its strategic decision to exit the manufactured home lending market in May to focus on its core business of traditional home loans, according to company spokesman Thomas Kelly.

The transaction, expected to be completed by Dec. 31, has given Vanderbilt and 21st Mortgage the need to hire 200 employees to service the loans, said John Kalec, a spokesman of the hiring lenders’ parent company Clayton Homes Inc.

Chase, on the other hand, has already notified 60 marketing employees that their jobs have been eliminated and is “still looking at what impact” the sale of the portfolio will have on its servicing staff, therefore does not know how many employees will be affected, Kelly said.

To help service half of the to-be-acquired loans, Vanderbilt will add 75 employees to its current overall staff of roughly 900 in Maryville, Tenn., Kalec said.

21st Mortgage, which will service the other $2 billion in acquired loans, will hire 125 employees in addition to its existing base of almost 400 employees in Knoxville, Tenn., he added.

Kalec said the companies have already been hiring in anticipation of the transaction and expect to have all jobs in place by the end of December.

The new employees’ salaries will range from $25,000 to $50,000, the Clayton spokesman said.