This year’s conference also reflected the changes now happening in the housing market, including the shift from refinance to purchase loans. There was also one new development with the ‘Worker Blueprint’, a program NAMB rolled out exclusively to educate borrowers on how to start their own business.
Desantis turned the focus on his own role as a broker, pointing out that he worked with 25 different wholesale lenders because, he said, “one size does not fit all”.
He said having such a large pool of wholesale lenders provided him with far greater flexibility. He cited the case of a customer who had previously been unable to get a loan because he had filed for bankruptcy but was able to get a deal done with him in three weeks thanks to his having “so many different lenders on board”.
He went on: “I was just audited by the Division of Banks (DOB), and they came back to me and said ‘you’re a true broker Mike, because what we see is that brokers now only have relationships with two to three wholesale lenders’.”
Desantis recalled how he had been described as “an old school broker” because of his ability to rely on a large selection of wholesale lenders. He added: “Some lenders are great certain weeks on price, while others are great on 2k or 3k loans, or great on jumbo. One lender sometimes just doesn’t fit all.”