Marc Luber: Hey everyone – Marc Luber here from Careers Out There - you can find me at
Careers Out There dot com.
I recently interviewed Tommy Rosenthal – he’s a mortgage banker at USA Mortgage Company
in St. Louis, Missouri and one of the Top 10 mortgage originators in all of St. Louis
for the past 13 years.
I asked Tommy to explain mortgage banking and to compare it to some related career paths.
Here’s a look at how it went!
Tommy: Our jobs are to originate loans – home loans.
So we provide the financing to help borrowers out in purchasing a home or refinancing, meaning
saving money, on a current home.
Luber: On the phone we talked about a couple different career paths that are related to
what you do.
I want to talk about those and if you can kind of distinguish each one for us so that
we could figure out the differences.
The 3 were: Mortgage banker like yourself, then mortgage broker and then a loan officer
handling mortgages at a big bank, like a Bank of America, Wells Fargo.
All related paths yet different.
Tell us the differences between those.
Tommy: Well here’s the difference.
And they are kind of subtle differences.
They’re all in general doing the same thing but with slight differences.
So a mortgage banker, which is what I am: I work for a mortgage company.
We close loans in our company’s name and we
use our own funds to close loans.
But then after closing, we sell the loan off to a Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citi mortgage,
Chase…any of the big companies.
So we’re doing everything in our company’s name and then closing.
A loan broker – or a mortgage broker – the main difference is they are also gonna originate
loans but IMMEDIATELY – BEFORE CLOSING that loan it’s gonna be transferred over to a
Wells Fargo, Bank of America.
They’re gonna not use their own money in the transaction and they are not gonna close
in their company’s name.
They’re gonna close wherever they sold the loan to.
So the main difference could be sometimes higher fees for mortgage brokers because that’s
one way that they make their money by immediately selling off the note.
A loan officer at a bank – the duties will be the same but the main difference is where
we’re gonna have many different investors that we’ll sell our loan to – a loan officer
at a Bank of America, you might walk in and see a loan officer and say “I want to do
a loan with you guys” and the only loan company that they’re gonna be using IS Bank
of America.
They’re not gonna be selling a loan.
Luber: So they only have THEIR rate.
They could only say to you “here’s our rate today”.
Tommy: Exactly.
Luber: And YOU have a broader array of rates you could offer?
Tommy: We do.
We have a broader array.
Which is great.
We have more companies we could sell our loans to.
Now that being said, one nice thing about being a loan officer at a bank, is they’re
also often able to do what’s called portfolio loans, which are the bank can make their own
decision on certain loans that are not necessarily by the book, for lack of a better term.
So if they think a loan makes sense and their bank agrees that they want to do this loan,
they’re able to do that.
And that’s one advantage of being a loan officer at a bank as opposed to a mortgage
company.
Luber: And then you’re competing with all these characters, right?
You’re not ONLY competing with mortgage bankers, but you’re competing with the loan
officers at the banks AND the mortgage brokers, right?
Tommy: Totally!
We’re in competition with everybody: different mortgage bankers, banks, mortgage brokers…all
of us…because the jobs really are very similar.
Luber: Yeah.
Tommy: There’s definitely competition involved.
One thing that’s important to know, again, is if you’re a mortgage banker or a mortgage
broker or a loan officer, again it all comes down to if people like you and you’ve got
good products and good prices, you’ve got a great chance of success.
Luber: And if someone’s watching and this sounds cool to them, there’s actually a
lot of different kinds of opportunities, then, because there’s different places they could
go if they actually want to start working.
Tommy: Absolutely.
Totally.
Any of those.
It gives someone out there that’s looking for a career MANY opportunities - they can
go any which way as far as that’s concerned.
Luber: I hope this video was helpful for you guys.
If you liked it please click the thumbs up!
You can also find us at Facebook, Twitter, we’ve got lots more videos here on YouTube
and of course you could find us at Careers Out There dot com where we interview all kinds
of professionals to help you find a career that fits you so you can love what you do.
Thanks again for watching everybody.
I’m Marc Luber.
Look forward to seeing you again soon.
Take care.
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