John Antonelli survived the Great Recession with no ill effects
Armed with a finance degree from the University of Maryland, John Antonelli, the president of Vantage Point Financial Group Inc., was not aiming for a career in the mortgage industry.
“I truthfully wanted to be a financial advisor,” he told Mortgage Professional America during a recent telephone interview. “I was always good with numbers. But I didn’t like any of the entry points in becoming a finance advisor – bothering my family and friends or cold calling. There’s was no real middle ground. On the mortgage side, what attracted me was it’s a very simple equation: If you take care of realtors and take care of their clients, there can be an exponential impact there.”
He illustrated the point with an early work experience: “My first boss showed me a spreadsheet. You have one realtor sending you ten deals, that’s 10 deals. You have 10 of them sending you 10 deals, that’s 100. It was a very easy equation for me in my head. That’s how I got into the business, right out of college. I was part of two failed mortgage companies, and then started my own company in 2009.”
In that respect, Antonelli is something of a unicorn. Nearly to a person, profile subjects for MPA generally convey how they stumbled into the mortgage industry after having worked in other sectors. For Antonelli, the mortgage industry is all he’s known: “I’ve not had any experience in the workplace other than mortgages and specifically mortgage brokerage,” he said. “I was fortunate enough I had people I knew in the mortgage business, and they helped get me started. I was fortunate enough to convince realtors to send me some business, and it kind of steamrolled from there.”
What caused the housing crisis of 2008?
Which isn’t to say the road wasn’t daunting. An abundance of subprime mortgages sold as securities would soon lead to the Great Recession, with heads rolling along the way. It was witnessing the collapse of former mortgage giant Countrywide Financial – which became emblematic of the entire financial scandal – that convinced him to venture out on his own.
“I was with two different mortgage brokerage companies,” he said. “But getting started in 2005, you’re talking about [the] subprime market. By 2007, a lot of those guys started getting out of the business because a lot of the guidelines got crunched, and in 2009 a lot of people just couldn’t handle the business anymore and there was not business to be had. When you see companies like Countrywide going under, instead of jumping to another company. I just decided to start my own thing and dictate my own fate.”
Did the Great Recession affect everyone?
To untold millions of people, the Great Recession was no picnic. Yet for Antonelli, the road was surprisingly smooth.
“It actually ended up being a lot easier than you would think,” he said. “When you’re in a referral business, even if business goes down 50%, if you double the amount of real estate agents or referral sources you have, your business stays sideway – even through ’08, ’09 and 2010. Part of that is just hard work. During all these changes, a lot of people got out of the business, so now all of a sudden there was another market I could capture, other realtors I could bring [into] the fold. So really it was staying true and consistent with my methodology and building off that.”
It was during times of expansion that that his most memorable moment would emerge: “There’s a point in time where I couldn’t do any more business than I was doing by myself, and I hired a key person to work as a team member – outside of a processor – to help me sell deals, structure deals, etc. I just had too many calls, too many things going on. I was growing a family.
“I hired somebody and it opened my eyes to the ides of scaling up, and being able to realize that I don’t have to do everything – I can rely on others. And there are people whose strong suits fill in my weak spots. Even though I became very good at being detail-oriented, that’s not my nature. My nature is to get out there, mix it up, sell. So bringing someone in who has that introverted perspective allowed me to grow exponentially.”
It's been said the past is prologue. With new market challenges upon us, approaches similar to those undertaken by Antonelli in past cycles could very well save the day.
