First Quarter revenues of $224 million generated diluted earnings per share of $1.79 up 20% over q1 2020 on total transaction volume of $9 billion.
Well, the scenery can now change and we will use our market leadership position to win more clients continue investing in technology and benefit from the fantastic branding that this accomplishment establishes our vision to be the premier commercial real estate finance company in the United States was established in 2010 when Walker and Dunlop Lync $2.7 billion on commercial properties, or 7%.
of the $37 billion that Wells Fargo lent that year as the largest lender in the country, and over the last decade due to hiring great people investing in technology and building our brand.
We moved up to the number four spot in the league tables after lending $24.7 billion on commercial real estate in 2020.
We are a company of only 1000 people with a very real opportunity to grow to three to 5000 people by investing in technology and entering new markets.
The fact that we ended 2020 with 1000 employees, and over $1 billion in revenues allowed us to maintain our metric of over $1 million of revenue per employee.
As this slide shows, revenue per employee of over $1 million places Walker and Dunlop in line with VSA and just behind the global tech giants, Facebook, Google and Apple.
Just last week, we closed on a $37 million financing.
This part of the 27% of our total transaction volume in q1 coming from new clients to Walker and Dunlop.
That is up from 23% for all of 2020.
new loans to our servicing portfolio increased to 79% in q1 of 2020, up from 66% for all of 2020 so rather than simply refinancing the loans in Walker and daube sizable $110 billion servicing portfolio.
Almost 80% of the loans we refinanced in q1 were new loans to Walker and Dunlop, generating finance financing fees, and adding mortgage servicing rights to our loan portfolio.
According to pre Quinn, commercial real estate focused funds began 2021 with a record $324 billion of dry powder.
With banks life insurance companies and debt funds coming back into the market and $105 billion of capital for Fannie and Freddie left to lend in 2021.
And as you can see on this slide, over $320 billion of multifamily loans mature over the next five years.
And that momentum contributed to both strong financial results and good progress toward the achievement of our drive to 25 long term strategic objectives in the quarter.
For the first quarter, we generated diluted earnings per share of $1.79 of 20% year over year on 224 million of total revenues.
earnings in the quarter included the positive benefit of reducing our allowance for credit risk by $11.3 million, which added 25 cents to ups.
One personnel expense as a percentage of total revenues was 43%, which is elevated compared to a typical first quarter due to recent investments in people as we continue to scale our business and support our future growth.
During the quarter, we grew our team of bankers and brokers to 214 from 205 at the start of the year, further increase in both our geographic reach with hires in Ohio, California, Texas and Maryland, and our investment sales product capabilities with the acquisition of student housing focused four point even with the increase in compensation expense, operating margin was 33%, inclusive of the reserve release, and 28% without within our typical range of 28 to 30%.
Return On Equity was 19% in the quarter, consistent with last year and within our expected range of 18 to 20%.
Total transaction volume of $9 billion was down 20% from the first quarter of 2020.
as anticipated, given that we originated the largest portfolio in our company's history, a $2.1 billion Fannie Mae transaction last q1.
Notably, we saw strong debt brokerage volumes of $4.3 billion in a quarter of a percent from last year has very strong values indicative of an active market for commercial real estate financing is attracting significant amounts of capital as we continue to progress toward a post COVID environment.
72% of our debt brokerage volumes were multifamily compared to 94% in the year ago quarter, reflecting the pickup in London on other asset classes.
A mix of our $7.6 billion of debt financing volume in q1 21 was skewed more heavily toward debt brokerage originations as compared to the first quarter of last year.
Our hot volumes at 622 million, we're up 75% from q1 20, continuing the strong performance off of 2020s record year.
In addition, our interim lending program was very active in the quarter with $178 million of multifamily bridge loans originated through our JV with Blackstone, and on our own balance sheet.
Our market share with Fannie and Freddie remained above 11%.
And we expect that our overall volumes will pick up over the next three quarters, as the GSE has managed their deal flow to ensure that they use all of their remaining $105 billion of lending capacity for the year.
Invest in sales volume of 1.4 billion was down 19% from last year's first quarter.
q1 adjusted EBIT da $61 million is down slightly from q1 of last year, but it's the highest quarter of the EBIT da since the start of a pandemic.
As we are seeing the benefit of the strong mortgage servicing rights that we booked during 2020 translate into cash servicing fees, which were up 19% in the quarter.
As you can see on this slide, the servicing portfolio ended the quarter at $110 billion with a weighted average servicing fee of 24.3 basis points of one fold basis point from the first quarter of last year, which is huge given the overall size of the book, and the fact that we have added over $15 billion of net new loans to the portfolio in the last 12 months.
With 85% of the portfolio's future servicing fees being prepayment protected, the portfolio will continue to fuel meaningful stable cash servicing fees, approaching $275 million on an annual basis.
As I mentioned earlier, this resulted in an $11.3 million recapture of provision for credit losses in q1 of 2021.
Compared to an expansive $23.6 million in the first quarter of 2020 when the pandemic was declared one year later, we have very few loans in forbearance.
The debt service coverage ratio of the $50 billion of loans we have risk on, remained above two times at the end of 2020, consistent with the end of 2019, while unemployment rates are still relatively elevated at 6%, this is a significant improvement from the higher 14.7% that we saw in April of 2020.
We feel that the current level of the allowance at $64.6 million is sufficient to cover any future losses that could arise in the portfolio over its expected remaining life.
We ended the quarter with over $277 million of cash on our balance sheet, and another $62 million funding loans held for sale, bringing our total cash available to $339 million.
We are currently exploring a number of strategic acquisition opportunities that are in line with our drive to 25 objectives, investing in revenue generating technology and initiatives and continuing to bring on banking and brokerage talent, all of which is supported by our strong cash position today.
Yesterday we announced the acquisition of 75% of Zelman and Associates, the leading housing focused research firm in the country.
We expect the Zellman platform to contribute between 15 and 20 cents in earnings per share in its first year.
Yesterday, our board of directors approved the quarterly dividend at 50 cents per share payable to shareholders of record as of May 20.
During q1, we made significant progress toward our strategic objective of our five year growth plan to drive to 25.
The overarching goal of the drive to 25 is to grow revenues from $1 billion in 2020 to $2 billion in 2025.
A year ago, a prize produced 55 appraisals in q1 this year, we did 5x that volume and we intend to continue growing that number by multiples.
But as part of our drive to 25 objectives, we set a goal to formalize and expand our investment banking services.
And as these two industries collide in the single family homes for rent market, Zelman and WD will be perfectly positioned to provide expert coverage of these markets, gentleman's research and analytical capabilities, coupled with Walker and dunlops vast data from our 100 and $10 billion servicing portfolio, and technology investments provide the bankers and brokers at Walker and Dunlop with the very best insight into micro and macro markets across the country to enable their sales efforts.
As we make significant strides toward the strategic and financial components of the drive to 25.
I've watched this wonderful company grow from one office and just over 40 employees into the national powerhouse it is today and I must say I've never been prouder, nor more excited about all we are currently doing.

Summary:
First Quarter revenues of $224 million generated diluted earnings per share of $1.79 up 20% over q1 2020 on total transaction volume of $9 billion.
For the first quarter, we generated diluted earnings per share of $1.79 of 20% year over year on 224 million of total revenues.