You can never give up says multiple marathon-running adviser
When Luke Senior (pictured) went to see a mortgage broker about buying a house, he came away not just with a mortgage, but with a new career too. So impressed was he with the role, that he wanted to do it himself and he didn’t hang around – he had qualified by the time his property sale went through.
Yorkshire-based Senior has since established himself in the industry, mostly advising on residential mortgages and specialist buy-to-let loans, and today works within the Just Mortgages network. He knows plenty about challenges, both professionally and personally. He went self-employed just after Britain voted to leave the European Union, with all of the uncertainty that entailed, and last year he embarked on running five marathons on five consecutive days for charity. Clearly, he understands the importance of pushing through and overcoming any hurdles which come his way.
Senior worked in various sectors before finding the role that best suited him, in mortgages. His careers adviser at school possibly called it right early on and certainly came pretty close. A test he completed to see which job he should pursue suggested accountant. When he left education, he actually worked as a quantity surveyor, but in the financial crash of 2008 he lost his job, aged just 23.
Various temporary roles followed, before Senior took a position with a demolition company and applied for a mortgage – he was immediately intrigued by what his broker did. “This was around 2011-2012, the construction sector was quite flat, and I was not really feeling like I was getting anywhere,” he told Mortgage Introducer. “I just thought, ‘you know what, go for something completely different’. I'd always worked with numbers anyway, and by nature, I'm quite analytical. I could see that I'd feel comfortable talking about things like interest rates and I've always felt comfortable dealing with different types of people. It's just applying these skills in a different way.”
For Senior, the mortgage broker role potentially offered some consistency – and he didn’t waste any time in getting qualified. “I wanted to be a little bit more in control of what I was earning,” he said. “In the construction sector, a lot of it is out of your hands. In between putting the offer in on the house, in mid-October, and getting the keys just before Christmas. I'd passed my CeMAP exams.” He took up his first mortgage role and, in those days pre-Zoom and Teams calls, he drove as much as a thousand miles a week, attending appointments around a wide geographic area.
READ MORE: How a childhood fascination with property led to broker success
Launching a mortgage career after the Brexit vote
In 2016 Senior took a leap of faith to go self-employed – just as the UK was embarking on a big and potentially impactful change of its own. “The immediate aftermath of the Brexit referendum wasn't necessarily the best time to go self-employed,” he recalled. “There was uncertainty over the economic path and I was thinking, ‘well, how will this affect me?’ But then I thought that, ultimately, people were still going to want to move. I wouldn't say it's a recession proof sector by any means, but you shouldn’t get too preoccupied with external factors.”
Today Senior is thriving under the Just Mortgages banner, and eyeing expansion of his team. He knows what he will be looking for in a good candidate. “They need to be hungry and want to succeed,” he said, “and they need to have knowledge of the job - the technical side - but also the ability to deal with people and understand their concerns or reservations about the process, just being able to relate to the situation the clients are in. So it's a case of putting them at ease around the fact that it's okay to ask questions and to not know the answer to something. Our job is to be here for them until such time as they move into their property.”
He continued: “The initial thing is to emphasise to clients that we work for them, they are the boss ultimately. You can only function with the consent and support of your clients, and I have learned in business never to make assumptions about anything.”
Outside of work, Senior has used the tenacity that’s been evident in his business to raise funds for The British Heart Foundation, running multiple marathons. “There’s a history of heart attacks among men in my family,” he explained. “I started running in 2017, as I was rather unhealthy a decade or so ago, then I did my first marathon a year later,” he said, adding that his industry colleagues were bemused. “I think lots of people just assumed I was mad. I suppose the thing you learn is to not give up - a couple of times I quite easily could have done.”
