DartAppraisal.com doubles staff in Troy

The collapse of the housing market has destroyed many businesses in Metro Detroit, but it’s helping enrich at least one – DartAppraisal.com.The Troy-based firm has turned that big problem into a big opportunity and is hiring at a torrid pace now. The company had 14 people in early 2008 and now employs 30, plus 6,000 independent contractors and a few summer interns. It expects to hire another 5-7 people before the year ends and 7-14 more in 2010.”It’s been a great year,” says Darton Case, president of DartAppraisal.com. “Everything has been hitting for us.”Not that the company was doing too badly during the housing boom either. The online appraisal management firm was able to switch out of the normal appraisal game when the bottom of the housing market fell out. Today it handles refinancing, purchases and foreclosures in big states like Texas. All of this is from a business that started as a spin-off of Oakland Mortgage in 1989. That company, run by Case’s father, is now gone and DartAppraisal.com is growing strong.”It gave me a place to run and stay out of the my father’s hair,” Case says.Source: Darton Case, president of DartAppraisal.comWriter: Jon Zemke