Privlo Helps The 25% Of Texans Who Can't Get A Home Loan Because Of Their Jobs

LOS ANGELES, March 12, 2015  Online mortgage lender Privlo is announcing its official rollout into the entire state of Texas today, providing a new home loan option to the state's small business owners, freelancers, entrepreneurs, self-employed borrowers, and retirees who are largely being left out of homeownership. Following their initial soft-launch, Privlo's team has spent the past several months working with local realtors, opening an office in Austin and refining their process to cater more to the state's growing self-employed population.

According to Zillow, approximately 1 in 4 borrowers see their traditional purchase loan applications rejected in areas like Travis and Dallas Counties, where self-employment hovers around 30%. For well-qualified self-employed borrowers and retirees throughout the rest of the state, the chances of being rejected can be even higher. "It's not that they aren't financially capable of buying a home. It's that they're up against a traditional lending system that hasn't adapted to a changing workforce," says Privlo CEO, Michael Slavin. "Entrepreneurial Texans are increasingly defining their own careers and we've developed a way to bring them back into the housing market."

Unlike traditional banks and institutions, Privlo considers hundreds of additional data points beyond the typical W2 or tax return, individual career factors, and a wide array of alternative documentation to assess a borrower's creditworthiness. "We do a lot of the heavy lifting that traditional lenders won't do," says Privlo's Chief Credit & Product Officer, Saro Vasudevan. "We're estimating roughly 25% of high quality borrowers are slipping through the cracks in Texas, and we can help."

Privlo serves Texas' thriving Technology, Energy, and Life Sciences industries where many workers are independent or contract based, as well as those borrowers with complex finances such as:

• Small business owners, entrepreneurs, and self-employed 1099 workers with spiky income
• Retirees with significant assets who may be lacking in regular income
• Credit rebuilders who have a single negative credit event (bankruptcy or foreclosure as recent as a year old, or a short sale 6 months or older, as compared to the general standard of two years or more among traditional lenders)
• Those with a limited credit history, Millennials with non-traditional career paths, and foreign nationals with work visas

"I see homebuyers with great income and great credit get rejected all the time just because they don't have a cookie-cutter 9 to 5 job," says April McGowan of Team McGowan Keller Williams Realty in Dallas, who has been working with Privlo for the past few months. "I'm referring more and more of my clients to Privlo, who are actually able to close on mortgage loans that banks categorically reject. It's helping bring balance to the system and helping real estate professionals bring new buyers into the market. These are residents that ruled themselves out of the buying market thinking they won't get a mortgage. Privlo is providing renewed hope for these buyers without taking any shortcuts on credit quality."

Privlo is currently active in nine states with plans for a quick expansion into over 90% of the housing market (21 states) by the end of the year, and maintains a lifetime interest in every loan they make.

About Privlo
Launched in 2011 by CEO Michael Slavin, Privlo (https://privlo.com/) provides mortgages to high-quality borrowers who aren't eligible for traditional bank loans. The founding team comes from the worlds of consumer finance, real estate and technology startups, and is backed by Spark Capital and QED Investors. Privlo is headquartered in Los Angeles, CA and currently lending in California, Colorado, Idaho, Maryland, Minnesota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Washington state with additional states planned in the coming months.

Press Contact
Jasmine Bina
jasmine@jbcomms.com
(714) 328-3866

SOURCE Privlo