Send in the Clown

The Mortgage Devil was someone I was aware of...everyone who was a Loan Officer was aware of him...but was someone I had not met in person for the first 4 years of my career. My "lucky" day came in the form of an encounter at a Realtor's Convention.



But let me back up for moment. For some stupid reason (most likely I was desperate to increase business and income) I joined a Mortgage Finance Committee for our local Real Estate Board. This committee's sole purpose was to suck up to Realtors by providing them Continuing Education Credit seminars conducted by us. In return, they were subjected to the Committee members setting up booths that they had to walk past (chocked full with our own company's literature and freebies) to get to the classroom to get their Continuing Education Credit. This was called a "Convention" but it was basically a twisted symbiotic relationship between Realtors and Lenders.



The Committee consisted of all of the relevant Loan Officers in my market plus the Mortgage Devil. We basically got along OK and the Mortgage Devil didn't show up for a single meeting which wasn't surprising. We met mid-way between every one's office at a restaurant. Perhaps restaurant is too kind. It was more of a Red-Neck Dive...and when I say Red-Neck Dive I mean that the Wednesday night special at this place was Muskrat Stew...and I no, I am not joking.

To this day, I am still not sure why that location was picked as a meeting spot. The funny part of these meetings (at least to me) was the parking lot at the Red-Neck Dive. You could always tell when we had a meeting by surveying the lot. Among the Pick-up Trucks and Muscle Cars in the parking lot were all of my fellow Loan Officer's/competitors cars which consisted of Mercedes-Benz, Lexus, and BMW's. I always found this amusing along with the odd-looks we would receive from the jeans and flannel crowd as we entered the Dive.

Anyway, back to the tale.

So, the day of the "Convention" arrives. We had to arrive early...as in "butt crack of dawn" early to set up our booths before the Realtors arrived. We all trudge around the Convention Center and get set up. The Mortgage Devil has a booth but he has sent some interns/lackey's to set it up...he doesn't have time for such menial tasks.

The Convention starts at 9:00 a.m. and the Realtors start checking in and "milling" around the Booths. About 10 minutes into the show I hear some type of strange commotion going on by the registration tables and the hallway leading into the Show. It is part applause, murmuring, and perhaps some curse words. As I look at the entrance doors to see what was up...in comes the Mortgage Devil. Except he is not walking in. He is riding a uni-cycle....and he is juggling....and NO...I am not kidding. My booth was next to a competitor of mine. She is usually "bubbly"...basically she is a short blond Barbie Doll that always seem to have smile plastered on her face. But this morning the smile is gone and the words that came out her mouth would have made a sailor blush. It started with "are you fucking kidding me?" and ended with "what an asshole". In between , she had a rant of profanity to this day is in the top 10 rants I have ever heard. I am standing there watching the Mortgage Devil riding through the show on his uni-cycle and juggling...standing next to a Cursing Barbie Doll... and out of the corner of my eye I see a Loan Officer we like to call MiMi (because she looks exactly like Mimi from the Drew Carey show...google that image if you don't know what I am talking about) face down on a massage table getting rubbed down. Apparently someone invited a masseuse to set up a booth. These images are burned into my brain forever. Basically, I was standing there with my mouth open.

The only thing I could think of to say was "I guess someone decided to send in the clown". At least the Barbie Doll stopped swearing to laugh for a few seconds.

So, we all did the work for this "Convention" and the Mortgage Devil shows up the day of the event and "steals the show".

What I learned from this experience...this is his M.O. This is how he operates. No guts...all Glory...and I also learned that seeing Mimi getting a massage is an event that not even therapy can erase from your memory and that the Barbie Doll can curse worse than a sailor.

This was the first time I met the Mortgage Devil in person....my "lucky" day.

How I Met The Devil

So this blog was inspired by the worst boss in the history of the universe. We have many names for him (most are r rated), but for this blog post I will refer to him as the Mortgage Devil.

My first eight months in the mortgage business were relatively uneventful. I didn't have a lot of business because I was new so I probably only closed 4-5 loans a month for somewhere between $500,000 and $750,000 in volume. I didn't work much and I didn't really care about making more money.

Three strange and unrelated events conspired to result in more business for me which in turn made me more ambitious. First, my friend who got me into the business left for another brokerage. Turns out, she didn't have access to as many loan products so she started sending me referrals. Second, and this is totally true, one of my colleagues breast implant ruptured (it sounds funny but could have been fatal so stop laughing) and she was out for quite awhile. At first I worked for free on all her loans while she was recuperating, but after two months of that, she decided not to come back and all her customers and real estate agents started referring me business. Third, and this was the tipping point, I met a real estate agent who was friends with the Mortgage Devil. The Mortgage Devil was one of the most successful and well known loan officers not only regionally but nationally.

Suddenly business was pouring in. The real estate agent started sending me business the Mortgage Devil couldn't do. I went from doing 4-5 loans to 12-15 and my income went from about $4,000 a month to $15,000 a month. Then the Mortgage Devil contacts me to do a loan for him. I was able to finance investment properties with no down payment and he wanted to buy a rental house in a resort market. This moment forever changed my life. With the man's tax returns in my possession, I suddenly realized that the industry I was in was incredibly lucrative. I was shocked to discover that he made more a year than coaches in the NFL, his 401K I was pretty sure I could have lived on and never work again. I began to covet.

The Mortgage Devil started calling me trying to get me to go to work for his bank as a loan officer. I was flattered, but wary. I was on the fence about it because I had a lot of freedom and was comfortable where I was plus I was scared to go play in the Devil's sandbox.

One totally unexpected event forced my hand. I turned 30 and the president of my company was in town. I invited him to my friend's house for the party they were having for me. Turns out the man could drink, and drink he did. He drank nearly all of one of my birthday presents, a rather terrific bottle of Patron Tequila. Here's where the going got weird. We didn't think he could drive so I took his stumbling self up to my friend's guest room. He dropped his pants and skibbies and instructed me to "Touch It". I ran downstairs, chugged some wine, and told my girlfriend.

Awhile later we checked and he had passed out on the floor, junk exposed and pants around ankles. Holy Awkwardness. The next morning he came downstairs, grabbed a cup of coffee and headed out. I on the other hand, chose to not go into the office to avoid him and worked furiously with my loan processor to get the Mortgage Devil's loan to close that day. I decided that since I couldn't imagine ever respecting the president of my company again I would see what I could get the Devil to offer me to cross to the dark side.

Typically when you are recruited by a mortgage company you give them all your commission statements so they can determine what kind of incentive package they will give you. Since the Mortgage Devil seemed desperate to get me there and my commission statements would not support the volume of business he was under the impression I had been consistently doing, I bluffed. I told him if he wanted me he would make me an offer with no documentation, basically like all the no doc loans I was closing. He bit, told me it was unorthodox (which it totally is), and offered me $20,000 to buy out my pipeline (this is a loan officer's future stream of loan closings)and guaranteed commission of $5,000 per month for 6 months. I had been in the business one year and had just been offered $50,000 as a signing bonus just to change companies. I signed the paperwork and resigned from my current company via email.

The negotiation was the only time I had the power in my relationship with the Devil until I left his bank. The time A. Hole and I spent there and the experiences we had will shock the hell out of you, don't miss it. At the very least, your current boss will look fantastic in comparison to the Devil.

Banks = Boring

I got into the mortgage business sorta' by design. I have a degree in Finance and thought I would either work in Securities with a Brokerage Firm or work for a Bank. Well, I ended up with the later and starting working for a Bank right out of College in 1994. I actually took the incredibly dull tract of training to be a Bank Manager...the epitome of boring.

After working in several areas of the Bank during my first year, I decided to drop the Management Training program and just go to work in the Mortgage Department. Basically, the reasons for jumping into the Mortgage Department were as follows:

1) The most money to be made in a Bank is in the Mortgage Department. If you think all areas of Banking equates to great money, you would be wrong. You could make the same working at Wal-Mart in management. The only upside of working at the Bank is that you aren't subjected to the "people of Wal-Mart". Go "google" that site when you get a chance...you won't be disappointed.
2) The other parts of the Bank (IRA's. Branch Management, New Accounts, etc.) were so incredibly boring that I feared I would go postal one day. My target would have been some "Old Ass Fucker" that wanted to argue the quarterly interest on his IRA certificate of deposit was supposed to compounded monthly instead of quarterly (see what I mean about boring).
3) You have a bit more freedom to get "out of the office" when you are in the Mortgage Department. The ability to get "out of the office" and not be "chained to my desk" was important for the management of my Adult Attention Deficit Disorder.

The Bank I worked for was small and ultra-conservative. You actually had to qualify for the mortgage loan. When I say qualify...I mean the following:

1) Have a down payment of at least 20%
2) Have GREAT credit.
3) Have the ability to meet qualification ratios.
4) Have the ability to provide: 6 months of bank statements, 2 years of pay stubs, and W-2's.
5) Have the desire and willingness to give up your first born child as collateral.

Perhaps 5) is an exaggeration. We promise everything in this blog will be the absolute truth (as you will read later on, we couldn't even make this shit up).

To make this long story short, my counterpart and I came from totally different backgrounds before we met each other at a large National Mortgage Company at the height of the housing boom. Our experiences before we met were as different as night and day. My counterpart wrote mortgages for people a day out of Bankruptcy...the Bank I worked for treated people with a Bankruptcy like...well...a Leper.

Buckle up and enjoy the ride.

Shock and Awe

I got into the mortgage business by accident. A friend who was already working as a loan officer sold me on joining the ranks by extolling the amounts of money I could make and pointing out that I could drink at lunch while making all this money. Brilliant!

So it was. In 2004, I became a mortgage consultant (mortgage ho) and started in the industry with no training, no experience as a loan officer, and no fucking clue what was in store for me.

I remember my second day at work vividly. My friend was showing me the ropes and was explaining how to put loans through automated underwriting and shop different lenders for the best programs and rates for our valued customers. About this time she gets a phone call from someone who wants to buy a home but had recently filed for bankruptcy. She explained to the customer that it wasn't likely that she could find anyone to do the loan but promised to check it out and call the potential borrower back.

Turns out there was not only one lender willing to finance this recently bankrupt borrower to purchase a home, there were many. In fact, multiple lenders would let the customer buy their new home only 1 day out of bankruptcy. My shock manifested itself in two loudly high pitched questions: 1. Are you fucking kidding me? 2. Why the fuck would someone lend Mr. Recently Bankrupt money?

The sad thing is that reaction became less frequent as I became more savvy and aware that most anybody could get a loan, regardless of whether they should or not. That shock and confusion as to why money was lent didn't really return for me until I left the business in 2007. I fondly remember the bankruptcy borrower day as the beginning of the Shock and Awe portion of my life and the day I realized there really are jobs where cocktails are acceptable at lunch.

Welcome!

This blog is inspired by our experiences in the mortgage business. One of us got out and one of us is still stuck working as a mortgage ho.

Everything on here will be true which is pretty fucking scary.