Are you ready to make the life-changing switch to wholesale and take advantage of what ‘going independent’ offers you as a mortgage broker or loan officer? Our team at BeAMortgageBroker.com is here to help you every step of the way.

OPENING DOORS FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS

For some independent mortgage brokers, helping people achieve the dream of homeownership is more than their business – it’s also personal. Denise is one such broker. From her own experience of becoming a homeowner to starting a broker shop, Denise is driven by having a platform to help others.

Connecting with Customers

After graduating from college with a business degree, Denise started working for a local mortgage broker in Texas. She quickly got licensed as a loan originator and started originating borrower loan applications. Those interactions with borrowers made Denise realize she’d found not just a job, but a rewarding career.

“You just connect with them, you hear their story. What it’s taken for them to get to this point where maybe this is the first time they’re buying a home or maybe they need to refinance and you learn about their families,” said Denise. “Teaching them, helping them is really what drew me to this business.”

A Change, Then a New Opportunity

In 2007, Denise decided it was time to teach and help a different group of people. She obtained her teaching certification and got a job as a 2nd grade teacher. The parallels between teaching and working in the mortgage industry were immediately apparent.

“You just have to look a child in their eye and you see when the lightbulb goes on and you see, they get it,” said Denise. “It’s the same with adults. They start asking questions, they start probing, and you explain things to them and they’re like ‘Oh, I didn’t know that.’

Denise kept in close contact with the owner of the broker shop where she first started out, even doing contract work for her during vacations and summers off from teaching. Then, a few years ago, the broker-owner came to Denise with a business proposition.

The broker told Denise that she was leaving the business due to personal reasons, but she still wanted her loan originators to have a place to work. She asked Denise if she would consider taking over. Without any hesitation, Denise said yes. “I just thought about the loan officers who were my friends, who are my friends and I thought, well yes, of course, they need a place to go.”

Within a few months, Denise opened her own independent mortgage broker shop in San Antonio — while also teaching pre-school.

“When I had that opportunity, I was really excited,” said Denise of opening her own mortgage broker business. “I will be honest, I was scared as well. Will I be able to do this on my own? Can I juggle all this? But when you’re motivated to help someone, when you’re motivated for someone else, at least for me, that was what drove me to say ‘yes’ and to keep going.”

Blazing a Trail

Before Denise became a teacher and a business owner, she was also a first-generation college student and the first person in her family to buy a home. After experiencing the magnitude of that milestone both personally and professionally, Denise looks at her job through a completely different lens.

“For many people, it seems so far-fetched,” says Denise. “They don’t understand that I can own something of my own. That’s so fulfilling, knowing that you helped a person reach a dream or a goal that they at one point thought was impossible.”

As Denise has seen with her own family and the others she’s helped throughout career, the ripple effect  can be felt for many years.

“I have a sister and a younger brother and we’re all homeowners and I helped them all with their loans!” said Denise. “Once you open that door for them, it will then change the generation that comes after them.”