Friends who once held menial jobs now make six figures at brokerage firm
When Ozzy Lara (pictured) got into the mortgage business, he was driven by a desire to do the right thing.
After being in the personal loan industry, he got into the mortgage industry in 2017 by virtue of securing a job at loanDepot that lasted about one year, he said during an interview with Mortgage Professional America. “Then, I worked at another firm, and the way I got into the brokerage world was I recommended a family member to one of my fellow brokers. They were giving them such a better deal compared to the retail section, and that’s when I figured, ‘hey, it’s time to jump into the mortgage brokerage world, and really provide great savings for these clients’. And that’s what got my career kicked off into the brokerage world.”
By this point, he was at Supreme Lending, where he worked for one year until June 2019. He traces his time there to when his frustration mounted. Although he enjoyed working at Supreme Lending, he was told he wasn’t ready to be a manager when he asked for the job. It was during his time working at other firms that his career paradigm shifted. “That’s when I started looking at things differently,” he said, recalling thinking “I should be doing loans for my family, and I should not be recommending them to somebody else.”
The die was cast. By August 2021, he launched NewMortgage LLC in Tempe, Ariz. Today, the company employs around 45 people, he said. So far this year, posted volume is between $50 million and $60 million across 110 to 130 units. By the second quarter he expects to post another $80 million to $90 million over 200 units, he said.
Read more: Minorities and mortgages: Black leaders’ thoughts on closing the racial divide
“That’s actually an interesting thing,” he said when asked how he was able to build staff so quickly. “I was making a great living for myself, and one of the other drivers why I got into the mortgage world was to help my friends make similar income to me as to where I could have fun – not just me eating the steak, but I want my friends to eat steak with me. I thought you know what, I’m going to start my own mortgage company, get them a job. That’s when we took off.”
Having given his friends a piece of the pie, he then set out to train them. “The interesting part about it is they had no experience in the mortgage world,” he said. “I essentially said it’s going to be very tough for someone to give you an opportunity, so I decided to create the opportunity for them. I’ve seen them flourish; one of them is the vice president of the company and another one is the loan processor manager.”
MPA asked Lara to describe the parts of his career that fulfills him the most. “One might think money, but it’s actually not the money,” he said. “It’s necessarily allowing individuals around you to rise to your level and really provide a monetary platform where they can bring their families up.”
Among the backgrounds of some of his employees was one who used to install roofs, another who used to build cell phone towers, one who cleaned carpets, another in collections and yet another stacking products at Walmart. “Taking those individuals and putting them in the six-figure bracket is what fulfills me – seeing others excel personally and monetarily,” he said.
His staff is composed of primarily minorities, working in an industry that has recently made moves to diversify the broader rank and file. “My company is 90% minority,” he said with palpable pride. “You gotta put money in minority’s pockets too, you know.”
Read next: Minority homeownership gap – the sobering statistics
He attributes his drive to being the product of hard-working immigrants. “We rose to the occasion,” he said of his tough upbringing by Mexican parents – a dad who worked as a farmer and a mom who worked at a factory. He now has a family of his own, with he and his significant other raising three young children.
Lara said he’s less concerned than others about a changing market slowed by rising interest rates.
“No one wants to know rates are going up, so keeping customers happy is really the only way to stay afloat. We are in an industry that has cycles. In a cycle that’s not necessarily company-friendly for margins, per se, you have to maintain until the cycle changes for the industry. And that’s where you reap the benefits of what you did when rates were high.
While others pivot to non-QM, for instance, as an added vein, he’s decided to stay the course: “Why reinvent the wheel that works? You don’t have to shift who you lend to because of what rates are doing. We can shift to non-QM, but that’s easy, right? It’s easy to do purchase. We don’t shy away from what’s difficult to do. It’s hard to keep customers happy but someone has to do it. While everyone pivots away from this market, we’re going to continue doubling down on the refinance market.”
To navigate through choppy waters, the formula is simple, he said: “You invest in your people, advertising and customer satisfaction.”
