From the Top From the Top continued on page 12 relatively speaking, and I plan to stay in this business for another 20 years. My target is to be a top 25 retail originator, in the 20 to 30 loans a month range. Right now, we’re doing anywhere from five to 15 loans a month. We have seven employees, down from ten before volumes declined. We intend to cycle back up once the Fed starts cutting rates. Long term, I see us writing 20 to 30 loans a month with 12 to 15 employees. We’re licensed in 15 states. We’ll probably grow to approximately 20 in the next few years. The states we’re licensed in cover 80 percent of the HECM volume in the country, so the last 35 licenses would be just to pick up a small percentage here and there. We only originate reverse mortgages, and we’ll stay that way. I have no desire to dabble in forward mortgages. It’s a different animal as everybody knows, and we have enough trouble keeping up with all the nuances in reverse. RM: Does most of your business come from Georgia? MN: A significant amount of it does, but our top states by revenue in 2022 were California, Georgia, Florida and New York, in that order. We’ve targeted the highest-volume states on purpose. Georgia closes less than 100 reverse mortgages a month. And when you’re competing with large companies on television, it’s hard to get ten of those 100. When the television ads became mainstream, I pivoted and decided I can’t do the boots-on-the-ground thing anymore. I needed to come up with an idea to generate leads with a more national focus if I wanted to be a bigger player. I was successful at doing that in 2019. That’s when I started to hire people because I was taking on more than I could handle myself. I hired a processor and then started looking at loan officers. That’s where we are today. RM: What are some lessons you’ve learned over time that have helped make you more successful? MN: Time management is important. Reverse mortgages require a certain amount of labor, and you can’t automate those hours. You need to be efficient and develop a process that can be easily repeated. You can delegate, but everyone right now is cognizant that they need to be lean. It’s tough to be profitable right now and so you can’t overstaff to handle the highest-volume months with ease. Over 19 years, I’ve learned to pre-underwrite loans because it made me a more successful loan officer with a pull-through rate of 80 percent. I do that for every loan that comes through our door. I spend an hour looking at every document, reviewing the loan software, and visiting Zillow and other valuation sites. I look at Google Maps for images of the home. I look for red flags to catch them early and avoid wasting time on a loan that’s going nowhere. The other thing would be saying “no” to unpleasant customers. A not insignificant percentage of borrowers are not happy with their lives, for whatever reason. If somebody comes to us and they’re just generally angry and not pleasant, we cut ties with them because it saves time and eliminates headaches. RM: How do you generate most of your loan production? Business referrals? Advertising? Social media? MN: I’m in the process of getting us more diversified. We have a boots-on-the-ground loan officer here in Georgia who goes to all the senior networking groups. PRM does a good bit of web advertising. We tested videos on YouTube and are likely to keep playing around with that channel. We’ve sent out direct mail with limited success. We may try television advertising, but right now, we’re focused mainly on the web. We avoid social media due to the perception of our industry. I’m not a fan, particularly if people can post comments. What you learn is that it is very difficult to generate traditional HECMs at an acceptable cost per acquisition. RM: You’re based in Georgia but licensed in 15 states, including California. Does your marketing strategy differ at all by geographic location? MN: As far as our approach from state to state, we’re mainly an inside sales team. The people I have working as loan officers come from an environment where they’re used to selling over the telephone or on Zoom. Our approach to how we deal with people is not necessarily based on where they’re located but rather on the hours that they’re likely to be awake. We also have one loan officer who speaks Spanish because we get quite a few inquiries from people whose first language is Spanish rather than English. RM: I guess what I am trying to say is how do people in California find a small mortgage brokerage in Georgia? REVERSE MORTGAGE / JULY–AUGUST 2023 11
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjQ1MzY1