Eight months after a messy split from GuardHill Financial, mortgage broker Melissa Cohn launched a new company, MC Home Loans. The Manhattan-based mortgage banking firm opened for business Monday with a management and brokerage team of 26. It will focus on offering residential mortgages in greater New York and the Hamptons.
“My job and the goal of MC Home Loans is to really bring us to the forefront of marketplace, and that starts with Manhattan,” Cohn told The Real Deal, adding that she plans to open offices in Westport, Greenwich and East Hampton. The firm is headquartered at 145 East 57th Street.
MC Home Loans will operate as a division of David Brecher’s Brooklyn-based mortgage bank FM Home Loans, which will fund the loans MC Home Loans plans to originate, Cohn said.
For Cohn, MC Home Loans offers a chance to return to the top of New York’s residential mortgage market. She founded Manhattan Mortgage about 30 years ago, and grew the firm into Manhattan’s largest independent mortgage broker before selling it in 2012 to Chicago-based mortgage lender Guaranteed Rate. Last year, Cohn joined GuardHill Financial, the mortgage broker founded by Alan Rosenbaum, as company president.
But she was fired this January after mere months on the job, and subsequently sued GuardHill for alleged wrongful termination, which the company strongly denied. Her suit implied that she was canned because of a power struggle with Guardhill’s chief executive officer and founder Alan Rosenbaum. GuardHill, however, maintained that Cohn was fired for “her continued unacceptable behavior,” and said that Cohn’s claims are without merit. The suit has since been settled.
Cohn was excited to move past the tiff with Guardhill.
“How often does someone get the opportunity to reinvent themselves for the second time in their career?” she said.