Damon Germanides co-founded Beverly-Hills based Insignia Mortgage, America’s number-one originator by average loan size. Here’s how he allocates his time
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Chat with Damon Germanides for 15 minutes, and it’s clear he’s a thorough, meticulous, organizational powerhouse. The $200-million-plus originator is also hands-on. Germanides personally reviews every one of his files at Insignia Mortgage – America’s number one originator by average loan size at $1.9 million.
The Beverly Hills-based company – co-founded by Germanides and fellow top originator Chris Furie – is a star in California’s jumbo-loan market, producing over $1.6 billion in total loan volume since 2012. Recent deals include a $25-million loan in Bel Air, a $14-million loan in Beverly Hills and an $8 million loan in Malibu.
Despite this stellar track record, Germanides sums up his success quickly and modestly: “There are no easy answers to doing complex loans. It requires time.”
For Germanides, time management is an art honed over more than a decade in the mortgage industry.
His day typically starts at 6:15 a.m. with a cup of coffee and the Wall Street Journal. Though Germanides stresses that he’s not a financial analyst, he follows the bond market and mortgage rates closely.
By 7:45 a.m., Germanides is at his desk consulting Salesforce, a cloud-based customer relationship management platform that tracks closings, marketing, customer service and other metrics.
“It has been a huge aggregator of data for us,” Germanides says. “Going through my Salesforce reports, I look at things like how fast are we closing deals. I dig into the files, and then I meet with my team about twice a week. We have 86 active files from preapproved to loans getting ready to fund – it’s a lot. By putting it in Salesforce, we can see who is the referral partner, what the real timing is on closing and ping each other on important tasks.”
Based on his Saleforce review, Germanides creates a to-do list with 10 to 15 items – an agenda he feels is manageable, rather than overwhelming. A fan of pen and paper, Germanides also jots down the most pressing tasks in moleskin notebooks, so he can cross them off when he’s done. Old notebooks are filed away in an office cabinet in case they are ever needed for review.
“I’m a big believer in tech, but I do still like writing things down that are important,” Germanides says. “I tend to combine the way I did things before technology with all of the technology.”
Germanides typically spends another few hours returning calls and emails. His lunchbreak takes a quick 30 minutes, unless he is meeting with referral partners – something he schedules several times a week.
During the afternoon, Germanides allocates three or four hours to review files, a critical process that other originators can neglect.
“That is my one tip to the next generation: Learn how to do the file,” he said. “You go get the tax return and analyse it. A lot of the time, I think people are afraid of tax returns. They may not have command of it. There are a lot of documents, but that is one thing that makes all the difference in the world. You want to be able to explain the positives and negatives of the loan, and say this is a good loan. Nobody is going to care about your loan more than you.”
Buyers in California’s high-end markets often have complex finances – one Insight Mortgage client operates a dozen businesses – but Germanides says he always makes a point of mastering the details, no matter how difficult.
A self-confessed “stickler,” Germanides stresses that this kind of thorough analysis has been critical to his success.
“The word spreads quickly when you can do something that others can’t,” Germanides says. “People say, ‘This guy can do these loans.’ That is how you earn your stripes.”
Germanides estimates that business administration tasks like calls to attorneys or accountants take another hour and a half each day, and marketing requires an hour or two. Insight Mortgage runs print and digital advertising, along with a weekly market commentary on the company blog.
At around 6 or 6:30 p.m., Germanides wraps everything up by tidying his desk.
“I don’t like to leave a mess,” Germanides says. “It’s okay if it gets messy during the day because it means we’re busy, but I try to reconcile everything. I start the day in an organized manner and end the day in an organized manner. After so many years, it has become second nature.”
Organization is an essential skill for any originator, Germanides says. Without it, you could miss important dates or fail to return calls, disrupting the entire loan process.
“There has to be some kind of system when you are dealing with 40 or 50 active files and 80 in your pipeline,” Germanides says. “Every day is a new day in the lending business. There is always some emergency coming up, as much as you plan ahead and try to map it out. If you organized, you can quickly figure out a solution.”
