At least somebody is making money in Aventura’s battered real estate market.

A publicly traded residential and commercial lender is crediting its new Aventura Mall location for driving record business results in August.

Expert Group, which trades as PINKSHEETS:EXPU, reported Sept. 10 it originated $111.7 million in loans in August.

"This is a huge increase over our $12.5M in origination for July,” said CEO Robert Rico. “This increase was driven by the opening of our new Aventura Mall location as well a major deal originated through our commercial division. This is by far the biggest origination month the company has ever had. We will have a report on specific profit numbers sometime later this month.”

The Aventura Mall location is the second for Expert Group. The North Miami Beach-based firm plans to add a third site later this year. In 2010, Expert Group plans to add an additional three locations -- one location every four months – and raise its number of originators to 250, Rico said. Operating at this capacity Expert projects $12.5M in annual revenues.