Learning from the past: Broker thrives amid market shifts

Key to the success of the changed focus is a strong database, he said. “That’s another huge thing,” he said. The company’s branding, coupled with a continually updated database have helped navigate through the choppy waters: “And treating people like family has helped,” he added. “We’ve massaged our clients the entire time.

“We’ve really worked our database up from 2012 to today. Even if my client isn’t buying a home, the son or brother are buying a home. We definitely pivoted to purchase and reverse mortgage. We always knew reverse mortgages pretty well but that was definitely another product we had to master or understand better when the market was falling apart. I guess you could say we just transitioned that world.”

The differences in his personal volume from one year to the next reflect the softened market. In 2021, he posted volume of $378 million across 1,347 loans. Last year, volume fell to 522 loans for $173 million.

But he’s far from panicked.

“There will be another shift, and on the other side of the hill is going to be possibly just as good as 2020 or 2021. So you really have to hone in and master your craft as much as you can because the competition will heat up again once we hit that downward slope. But if you think about it, if we’re locking people at 6.99%, if it gets to 5.99%, we’re going to refinance them. If we get to 4.99%, we’ll refinance again. And in that rare circumstance that we get to 3.99%, we’ll refinance them again.”