Hi My name is Michael (Brien) Maloney.. I am a San Francisco Bay Area native that grew up in San Mateo and have lived and worked ALL OVER the SF bay Area. I started working in real estate (HFC/Beneficial - consumer lending) when I was 22 years old in Sunnyvale,CA. I would compare working there to being in the Army of the mortgage industry. We worked with borrowers with "less that perfect credit" that were in really tough situations and it was up to us to find a solution. I worked in several bay area locations, including: Dublin, San Mateo and  Newark.  In March of 2003 HFC/Beneficial announced it was being acquired by HSBC and soon became HSBC NA (consumer lending).  After the mortgage market crashed in 2008/2009 HSBC dissolved the business unit alltogether. Putting in those years in the 'Mortgage Army' seemed to have paid off because I love working for HotPads, a rental website owned by Zillow.