Mortgage VP David Pendley shares what key characteristics a good mortgage loan officer should have. Think you have what it takes? Apply today for a career at Consumers.

 

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0:00:07.4 Lynne Jarman-Johnson (LJJ): Money, I’m Home. Welcome in, everyone. I’m Lynne Jarman-Johnson with Consumers Credit Union. From finance to fitness, we have it all. And today we are focusing on finance. How to put a little bit more money in your pocket. Well, I’ll tell you what. I know how. I love it when you visit, David Pendley, he’s the vice president of mortgage lending for us here at Consumers Credit Union. David, thanks for stopping on by.

0:00:29.6 David Pendley (DP): It’s great to be here, Lynne.

0:00:31.2 LJJ: Now, you know what. We have a really cool topic today, and that is a topic about how to become a mortgage loan officer, why you should, but also how important that role is in the home buying process. So, starting off, David, with telling us a little bit about a career at Consumers and what MLOs actually do.

0:00:50.2 DP: Yeah, a mortgage loan officer, often I refer to them as mortgage consultants because they are kind of a pivotal role in a real estate transaction. They help you from day one, even before the realtor, to kind of set the stage for what you qualify for, what you’re comfortable with, what is it going to cost you, what are some other costs that go into buying a house that you may not expect. So, they kind of set the stage and then often they’re a great referral source to complement the rest of your team, whether that be an added realtor or an insurance agent, or an attorney to walk you through the transaction. But a loan officer is always the best place to start when you’re looking at possibly buying a home.

0:01:36.9 LJJ: Now, David, I know that we at Consumers are extremely proud of our talented team that we have here, how does someone become a mortgage loan officer, and is there a space, an opening for people out there with talent that are really interested in coming to our culture?

0:01:53.7 DP: Yeah, really, I’ve always identified a mortgage loan officer takes three distinct skillsets. One, you’ve got to be administratively strong. You’re going to be shuffling a lot of paper, a lot of organization, a lot of details, a lot of dates and things like that, so you’ve got to be administratively strong. The second thing is, you got to have a certain amount of financial aptitude, if you are going to consult with people on their largest purchase ever and you kind of going to set them up for mortgage payments for the next X number of years, you’ve got to have an understanding of that and how to communicate that and then the third thing is, it is a sales job. It is a primarily all commission sales job, and it requires someone who is appropriately aggressive, not afraid to cold call, hit the street, sell, present yourself, offer the value proposition of why you and why Consumers. So those are the three things. Administratively strong, financial aptitude and sales ability.

0:02:49.3 LJJ: For people who are listening, how can they… If they’re even thinking about, “Hey, I really kind of want to dip my toes in the water,” to be a very successful mortgage loan officer, it takes relationships. Is that really a key ingredient, too?

0:03:05.1 DP: It is, it is. So often when I’m training a loan officer, whether they’re new or they just need a little bit of structure, first thing we do is we write down their sphere of influence, everybody in their life, the people they workout with, their… The realtors in their life, the attorney they use, their dentist, everything and we kind of organize that data and kind of see where their sphere of influence is and then we add the professional referral sources to that, that’s your realtors, attorneys, financial planners, accountants, builders, people who are directly in contact with people who are in need of a mortgage. And then we find the best strategic way to reach out to each one of these people or groups appropriately and tell them how amazing Consumers is at filling this need in their life.

0:03:53.0 LJJ: So why would a mortgage loan officer say, “Hey boy, I’d love to come to Consumers.” What is it that makes us a little bit special? What’s our secret sauce?

0:04:02.2 DP: Yeah, that’s… It’s interesting because right now, 95% of all lenders spend all of their loans to the same sources, they’re called GSEs, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, FHA/VA, and USDA, that’s where almost every single loan goes. So, they’re kind of boiler-plated, everybody from a broker to a mortgage banker, to a bank, to a credit union, that’s where almost all loans go. What’s so unique about Consumers Credit Union is about a third to half of our loans, we keep. We can creatively, if they’re good loans, we can creatively make loans that other people can’t. For example, yesterday, I was able to say yes to a 70-acre farm in Central Michigan. Nobody, none of those sources would touch that, and we can offer a great rate, a great price that other lenders can’t, because those loans will not sell in the secondary market. The other thing we can do is being a… what’s called a portfolio lender, where we open up our books and we make good loans other people can’t do.

0:05:00.8 DP: We can look at things, maybe a unique property, like the one I just shared, or maybe a unique situation in life, “Hey, I don’t have a job today, but the good news is I have a million dollars in the bank.” How can we do that? We call that an asset depletion and we have the ability to do that. We have the ability to do construction loans and lot loans and something unique, like an ITIN loan, an ITIN loan is a very unique category of loans that most places can’t do. So, we have a whole variety of loans like that. We are also doing at-your-service loan, and those are for police officers, firemen, teachers, people who are in our community, kind of bending over backwards for our community, doing amazing things. And we’ve offered a little special part for them, and the other thing that consumers can do is through our portfolio lending is our zero-down loan, that’s for good loans, but a couple can learn, an individual can literally buy a house with no money down and get an outstanding rate, and the best part about it is they don’t have to pay Private Mortgage Insurance, which could be very costly.

0:06:02.8 LJJ: You know, the products that we have are always so exciting because of the fact that we listen to the story of the person who is looking for a loan. If someone is considering becoming a loan officer, or they already are. Let’s talk numbers. How much is… Do you have an average that an MLO can make in a year? Obviously, it depends on sales and how savvy they are, but what is that baseline? Do you know?

0:06:29.4 DP: Yeah, we would want most of our loan officers in 2022 to be able to do at least a million dollars a month in mortgages, which is 12 million dollars a year, and that’s going to bump you up in that 90-ish, maybe up to $100,000 in income. We’ve got loan officers doing a lot more than that, but 2022, it is going to be a very highly competitive year, you need an organization like Consumers that has unique products that will open up doors that others won’t. It’s generally people who do well in this industry that are very competitive, they like the fight, they like to get in the ring and say, “I want to win,” and it’s going to take that type of loan officer. So that’s the range in which… Probably on the low end, 60,70, 80 to… Some numbers are just silly, and almost, it’s funny to quote, what some loan officers have achieved because they see it as a true opportunity, and some of them hit 40, 50, 60 million in business and it’s crazy. It’s amazing.

0:07:30.7 LJJ: Well, and it’s a lot of hard work, and I can tell you on a personal note, every one of our team members are extraordinary, and it would be awesome, anybody listening who’d like to join that team, please reach out to us. David, what’s the easiest way? Is it the website?

0:07:46.5 DP: I would say, feel free to send me a resume, my email address is david.pendley, P-E-N-D-L-E-Y @consumerscu.org. We also have a careers page on our website, you can hit that too, there’s, I think, a little bit more information about the job and so forth, but reach out to us.

0:08:09.2 LJJ: Alright. Well, David, thanks for stopping by. I really am excited this year, we’ve got a whole series of mortgage information planned, and we really thank you for your expertise.

0:08:19.4 DP: Thanks, it’s been great being here.

0:08:21.9 LJJ: I’m Lynne Jarman-Johnson with Consumers Credit Union, “Money, I’m Home: From finance to fitness.” Thank you so much. For all of those who are listening, if you have a topic you’d like to share, please send it our way, and thank you, Jake Esselink for your production skills. Everybody have a fabulous week. And get that home!

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