JPMorgan Chase to hire 850 loan officers in $750 billion housing push

Attention mortgage brokers and loan originators: JPMorgan Chase is hiring.

The financial services and investment banking giant said Monday it has expanded a previously announced commitment to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on U.S. home building and mortgage-related investments by 2035.

Over the next decade, the firm intends to invest upward of $750 billion — or roughly the gross domestic product of Belgium in 2025, according to World Bank data — to boost homeownership access and affordable rental housing through what it describes as “targeted investments in local communities.”

That includes the hiring of 850 new “home lending advisors,” the firm’s functional equivalent of mortgage loan officers.

“We’re focused on helping more people access quality housing they can afford,” said Michelle Herrick, head of commercial real estate at America’s largest bank, “and we’re working across the real estate community, local governments and nonprofits to scale housing solutions throughout the U.S.”

Dubbed the “American Dream Initiative,” the company first announced its intention to leverage massive private investments against a persistent U.S. housing supply shortage in March. The company took aim at restrictive regulations, hoping to boost public-private partnerships.

As the largest multifamily housing lender in the country and one of the largest warehouse lenders to nonbank mortgage companies, JPMorgan Chase said it will finance the construction or preservation of 1 million affordable housing units while helping 500,000 prospective homebuyers purchase homes. That includes 200,000 first-time buyers facing record-high home prices and elevated mortgage rates.

With $5 trillion in assets and $375 billion in stockholder equity at the end of the second quarter, JPMorgan says it isn’t just throwing cash at longstanding housing issues that in post-pandemic years have spiraled into a generational housing access divide. Instead, the firm said it is also engaging in policy work and advocacy, including around regulatory and zoning reforms, that would allow for more housing density, unlock underutilized land sites, modernize building codes and streamline permitting processes.

The company said it also intends to introduce “new digital tools” and consider “possible new loan product offerings” associated with “innovative construction options such as modular and manufactured homes.”

JPMorgan Chase will be in pole position to advance housing initiatives and deploy investment dollars as the newly minted chair of the Housing Advisory Council of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The council was launched last week with other inaugural members including building materials supplier James Hardie, banking giant Citi and UMH Properties, a real estate investment trust specializing in manufactured housing.

“Our goal is to make the path to homeownership clearer and more accessible for more people, wherever they are in their financial journey,” said Sean Grzebin, CEO of Chase Home Lending, in Monday’s press release.