She still maintains her base there, around two decades on
In the holiday film ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’, protagonist George Bailey, a building and loan banker, repeatedly expresses his fervent desire to someday leave his hometown of Bedford Falls where he’s long toiled. “I’m shakin’ the dust of this crummy little town off my feet and I’m gonna see the world,” he cries out in despair.
Toshia Drummond (pictured), of Approved Mortgage Solutions, doesn’t share such municipal disdain. Since starting her mortgage career in 2003, she has maintained her base in Plantation, Fla. – a town of some 100,000 residents a few miles west of downtown Fort Lauderdale where she went to high school. The city’s name is derived from the Everglades Plantation Co., which unsuccessfully tried to establish a rice plantation in the area during the early part of the last century.
Drummond has remained close to the community in the intervening years, helping neighbors – in some cases a couple of generations’ worth – achieve homeownership in her loan officer role. Unlike George Bailey, she expressed palpable pride in being able to make a difference there.
The value of connections
“I’m big on establishing strong connections and building long-lasting relationships,” she told Mortgage Professional America during a recent telephone interview. Many in Plantation remember Drummond in her earlier role teaching first graders – a career in which she spent two decades. “A lot of people know me in the community as teacher Tasha, even though it’s been 20 years!” she said with a laugh.
She was serious about teaching, armed with a doctorate’s degree in education with requisite bachelor’s and master’s degrees, along with visions of one day becoming principal and then superintendent of schools. But as Florida began to become financially prohibitive, she sought another career that would afford her a more comfortable living, she said. At her father’s urging, she secured her real estate license.
Follow these steps on how to get your real estate license in Florida in this article.
“Real estate started me and I love real estate still,” she said. “You really have to know how to structure loans and you have to really be able to communicate with people,” she said. “And people have to trust you when it comes to mortgage because that’s their life.”
It’s a matter of trust
In terms of trust, Drummond has all but cornered the market in Plantation. She found that many of her real estate clients were untrustful of people asking for their social security numbers, work history and other required elements to underwriting a loan. “They would ask me ‘who can help me get the loan? I don’t want to hand over my Social Security number’. It got to the point where I couldn’t get good mortgage brokers – they weren’t calling people back, and people didn’t trust them.”
That’s when she had her ‘aha’ moment: “That’s what made me say: ‘You know what? Let me get both licenses’. I love school as you can tell. I don’t mind taking tests. So, I went and did it. And I actually like mortgage brokering better. I love being a mortgage loan originator.”
Along the way, she’s helped many in her town achieve homeownership – including a mother and son secure their individual mortgages. Her trusted reputation in the town of her formative years has yielded an abundance of referrals, eliminating the need for advertising (although she noted she’s recently launched such marketing efforts).
“Helping a family achieve their dream of homeownership is really the most satisfying part of my job,” she said. “It’s not about money. A lot of people don’t have the wherewithal to go to a commercial bank and get through this process. It’s about structuring; it’s about having flexible programs that help homeowners.”
It’s more than a job, it’s a ministry
Given her penchant for helping others, Drummond said she views her work as something akin to ministry. “It is super rewarding, and it reinforces my belief and my values that good comes from helping others. And I love that I’m part of that community that helps people fulfill their dreams. And when I say I’m a part of that community, it’s the mortgage broker and the lender. We need each other.”
In terms of advice for those contemplating a career in the mortgage industry, she offered: “What I would say is you have to be passionate about it. Don’t do it for the money, do it for the passion. Everything else falls into place,” she said, including financial rewards.
Given her infectious enthusiasm, it’s little wonder that Drummond’s 32-year-old daughter has started to follow in her footsteps. “Funny enough, my daughter is a broadcast journalism major. She sees my lifestyle, so I’m like ‘if you want to be here, get a real estate license. I can feed you all the leads – are you kidding me? Come on’. She’s been very successful with that. So we’re a team, and she’s been very successful.”
George Bailey ultimately had an epiphany in realizing the profound, positive impact his life had on the community he once shunned – a perception emerging after a bit of forced introspection. Drummond didn’t need to delve deep to understand the value of her own contributions – she’s known it all along.
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