Massachusetts lenders last year continued to be dogged by tight inventory and low interest rates, but those who dominated this year’s Top Lenders invested in staff and technology to drive loan growth.

Guaranteed Rate outstripped its competitors in the residential market, with 2,430 single-family mortgages worth $985 million and 2,347 condo mortgages worth $513.9 million. The lender also made 287 multifamily mortgages worth $123.7 million. Those numbers made Guaranteed Rate the top lender by both volume and number of loans in most of those categories.

Shant Banosian, senior vice president, said the company had made substantial investments into technology, enabling buyers to begin an application online, upload all their documents securely and ultimately shorten the time between the application and the loan approval. That quick turnaround has proven an advantage in an often fast-paced and competitive market like Massachusetts, he said.

Meanwhile, Leader Bank claimed the No. 1 position among banks with 1,623 single-family mortgages totaling $718.9 million and 886 condo mortgages totaling $323.1 million. For Leader Bank, the purchase market kicked into high gear when rates dropped following the Brexit vote abroad, said Jay Tuli, head of retail banking and residential lending.

Leader Bank and others have been anticipating a shift back to the purchase market following what some have described as the longest refinance boom of their careers. For many mortgage lenders, that has meant investing heavily in operational staff, who can turn around prequalification letters in a matter of hours and speed up closing times. Tuli said that Leader Bank had opened a small processing center in Florida, staffed with 10 people, to handle some of its operational business.

Digital Federal Credit Union also invested in staff, doubling its loan officers dedicated to prequalification letters (from seven to 14), said President of Mortgage Lending Caleb Cook. The aim is to get the client a prequalification letter within two to four hours, and DCU’s staff follows up with that potential buyer over the next several months, he said.

That strategy evidently paid off. Digital Federal Credit Union remained the No. 1 credit union lender of single-family mortgages, with 389 loans totaling about $120.1 million. That represents a substantial increase from 2015’s 261 loans totaling $81.5 million. With interest rates poised to climb this year, Cook said he is expecting about a 50 percent reduction in DCU’s refinance business, but they’ve been preparing for this for a while.

“We expect to make up that difference in improved purchase originations,” he said. “We don’t expect our purchase volume to slow down because of rates at all. We’re really focused on continuing to improve our market share through purchase loans.”

Banks dominated in commercial mortgages. Rockland Trust was the No. 1 lender by both volume and number of commercial mortgages and made 280 loans totaling $345.5 million in 2016. That compares to 204 loans totaling $188.26 million in 2015.

Gerard Nadeau, executive vice president in charge of commercial banking, also said Rockland Trust had invested substantially in its commercial lending staff, with about 90 customer-facing staff and another 80 or so running backend operations in that division.

He said Rockland saw substantial demand for apartment buildings in 2016, though the bank actually reduced its activity there due to concerns in that class from 2015. On the other hand, retail in Boston, residential condominiums in Boston and the closer suburbs, and grocery-anchored retail complexes fit nicely into Rockland Trust’s commercial business, Nadeau said.

Of Rockland’s base in Massachusetts, along with its substantial bench of customer support staff, he said, “That gives us a competitive advantage.”

For nearly 145 years, The Warren Group has been the most trusted and reliable source in New England for real estate property data. The company maintains the most comprehensive property database today due to its long-standing relationships with town assessors, clerks and county registries as well as its extensive daily collection of transaction records in the field. Transactional data is collected daily, verified, matched to the appropriate property record and posted weekly and includes sales transfers, mortgages and refinances.

The data in this report represents all purchase and non-purchase loans made by banks, credit unions and mortgage companies in Massachusetts in 2016. Category breakdowns include single-family, multifamily (two-family and three-family combined), condominium, commercial, and residential refinance (non-purchase). Residential and commercial data are not combined in any reports. The commercial data in these reports caps all loans at $1 billion. Each category ranks the top 10 lenders by both dollar volume and number of loans.

For more information, please contact The Warren Group’s customer service department at customerservice@thewarrengroup.com or 617-896-5388.

Single-Family Mortgages

Condo Mortgages

Residential Refinance Mortgages

Commercial/Retail Mortgages

Multifamily Mortgages