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Alta Home Lending’s growth combined an acquisition with builder partnerships and a deliberate effort by its founders to shape the company’s culture. A San Antonio Express-News profile published October 11, 2026, reported that the San Antonio mortgage company had 150 employees after taking on an 80-person team in 2025. Its founders describe the culture as family-like, built around personal connection and activities beyond everyday work.
How Alta Home Lending began
Andrina and Manuel Valdes launched Alta Home Lending after acquiring Houston-based Republic State Mortgage Co. in April 2025. The acquisition brought an 80-person team, according to the San Antonio Express-News profile. By the profile’s publication in October 2026, Alta had grown to 150 employees.
The couple had worked together in the mortgage industry since 1998 and spent 20 years at another independent mortgage lender before starting Alta. Andrina Valdes said they decided to leave after that company’s founder died and its culture began to change. They wanted to build a company where they could set their own standard for workplace culture.
What the founders mean by a “family culture”
Alta’s leaders describe the culture as rooted in personal relationships, shared experiences and investment in employees beyond their job duties. Andrina Valdes pointed to half marathons, pickleball, holiday events and charitable opportunities as ways colleagues connect outside routine work.
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“It’s really about people connecting on a personal level,” Valdes said. She also described why that mattered to her: “You spend most of your waking hours in the office, and so enjoying what you’re doing and who you’re doing it with is valuable.”
Michelle Gonzales, Alta’s executive director of growth strategy, called the culture family-like and said it includes a “whatever-it-takes attitude” and investment in team members at and outside work. These are descriptions from company leaders, not an independent measure of workplace culture.
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How Alta’s business strategy supported growth
Retail mortgage lending
Alta’s business includes retail mortgage lending. The Express-News profile situated the company’s expansion in a difficult housing and interest-rate environment, which it connected to broader inflation and energy costs in the wake of the Iran war. That is the article’s framing, not an independently established explanation of market conditions.
Mortgage relationships with homebuilders
Alta also creates or manages affiliated mortgage companies tailored to homebuilders. The stated aim is to give builders more control over buyers’ lending process while broadening Alta’s sources of business.
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In September 2026, Alta signed with San Antonio-based DRB Group to establish DRB Home Loans, serving the builder’s buyers in Texas, Colorado and Arizona, the profile reported. It also said Alta had begun working with Houston-based Legend Homes, whose homes the article described as energy-efficient and aimed at first-time buyers and families. These partnerships are time-sensitive details reported as of October 2026.
Manuel Valdes connected the builder relationships to hiring needs: “We’re going to need to employ more people because of them.”
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What “doubled in size” means—and what remains a forecast
The profile’s growth framing refers to Alta’s reported change from the 80-person Republic State Mortgage team acquired in April 2025 to 150 employees at the time of publication. The figures are claims reported by the Express-News, not independently verified company filings.
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Andrina Valdes said the company was “on pace to double again in the next 12 months.” That was a forecast in the October 2026 article, not a confirmed later result.
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Workplace recognition reported in 2026
The Express-News reported that Alta appeared in its Top Workplaces rankings for small employers in the San Antonio area for the first time. The survey was conducted by Energage on behalf of the newspaper. The profile does not provide separate survey documentation or a methodology breakdown, so the recognition is best understood as the reported result of that survey rather than a broader assessment of the company.
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