I was saddened to learn of the recent passing of Warren Hitesh Myer. For those who never met him, Warren was one of the true pioneers of the online world of real estate. He probably originated the first online mortgage in 1992, and he founded Myers Internet in 1995.
I moved to San Jose, California, in 2000 to work for Myers Internet, my first Web-related job. We sold hosted websites to real estate and mortgage companies and generated online leads through sites like BestRate.com, Loanapp.com and MortgageFAQ.com. Applying for a loan on an SSL-encrypted website seems pretty pedestrian today, but this was some cutting-edge stuff 20 years ago. Warren was one of the key guys driving the adoption of online loan applications.
Over the years, I have had a few opportunities to reconnect with Warren. He was a regular attendee at Inman Connect in San Francisco and fairly active on social media. I was always eager to hear his thoughts and recently connected him with a lending/data startup in the Bay Area. My experience at Myers Internet drove me to acquire the URL, lenderama.com. I had no idea what to do with it. I just knew I had to have a professional, online presence moving forward. For a while, lenderama was mapped to a Myers-powered mortgagefaq.com site. Later, when I returned to wholesale lending, I used lenderama as a client resource repository. In 2005, it became my blog.
In retrospect, I owe quite a lot to Warren. He was the catalyst that helped change the course of my career. I sold lenderama.com in 2009, but I still feel a connection to the mortgage world through the relationships built through that site.
Like many habitual entrepreneurs, Warren was the single wage-earner in his family and did not have life insurance. He is survived by his wife, Suki, and four step-children. Please consider donating to the Warren Hitesh Myer Memorial Fund. I would really appreciate anything you can do for them.
R.I.P. Warren Hitesh Myer.
This post by Todd Carpenter is reprinted with permission from realtynex.us. Todd is the managing director of data analytics at the National Association of Realtors. He has more than 20 years of real estate and mortgage industry experience in technology, marketing and business development.