MATT NEUMEYER GRADUATED from Georgia Tech in 2003, and soon after, he interviewed for a job with Smith Barney. “I wanted to be a financial adviser, but they wanted me to mine data with no clear path to advance,” he says. When he decided to pursue a different career path, Neumeyer’s parents referred him to a family friend who owned a company called Shelter Mortgage in Atlanta. Because he didn’t have mortgage experience, Neumeyer was given a mentor who could teach him the tricks of the trade. The mentor originated forward mortgages and reverse mortgages, but it was the latter that Neumeyer gravitated toward. He was soon preparing proposals and applications, but he wanted to originate reverse mortgages on his own. “I saw an opportunity, so I asked him if he could focus on forward mortgages so that I could specialize in reverse mortgages and master them,” Neumeyer says. For the next eight years, he did just that, working for several mortgage lenders until he decided in 2012 to open his own company, Premier Reverse Mortgage (PRM). Reverse Mortgage magazine sat down with Neumeyer to learn more about PRM, his work ethic and what he has learned over the past 19 years that has made him successful. Reverse Mortgage: What motivated you to open your own mortgage brokerage company after being an originator for so many years? Matt Neumeyer: Around the time that the subprime fiasco hit, I envisioned Shelter Mortgage becoming a bigger player in reverse. However, Shelter didn’t have the proper training to underwrite HECMs and wasn’t enamored with the product. They were also unwilling to let me establish new wholesale relationships so we could deliver loans to more than one investor. That prompted me to change companies. For the next year, I worked for a lender that had a somewhat unique structure. I received no support from corporate. I was my own boss, so it was like owning my own mortgage brokerage business within the company. That worked out fine until I got a call from the owner one day saying the company had lost its license to originate loans in Georgia, where I am based. It completely caught me off guard, and so in my mind, I thought to myself, “I have to start controlling my own future.” I hung my license with one more company, but in the meantime, I started forming Premier Reverse Mortgage, which was a good thing because that company exited the reverse mortgage business three months later. The other factor that led me to strike out on my own is that a few years earlier, the Federal Housing Administration lowered its net worth requirements for third-party originators, so a significant barrier to entry to originate HECMs was eliminated. RM: What resources did you have to create a business from scratch? MN: I bootstrapped it with my own 401(k) and did it on the fly because I had no other choice. I had a mentor when I started at Shelter who taught me the reverse mortgage and forward mortgage game from a loan officer perspective. He now works for me, so we’ve come full circle from him being my mentor to being an employee. I had no resource guide. I made mistakes and learned from them. I’ve been a leader my whole life and am a go-getter, so a lot of it came naturally. RM: What can you tell us about PRM? MN: My vision all along was to be a midsize national lender, hovering around the top 25 in volume. To stay relevant in this industry long term, you must be nimble because the only constant is change. I’m still young, Matt Neumeyer, President and Founder, Premier Reverse Mortgage By Darryl Hicks Matt Neumeyer From the Top 10 REVERSE MORTGAGE / JULY–AUGUST 2023
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