Life lesson occurred in the wake of tragedy for New York City native
It’s impossible for New York City-based broker Eric Gasper (pictured) to forget when he got into the mortgage industry. It was 2001, the year terrorists downed the twin towers at the World Trade Center.
Ironically, tragedy yielded an opportunity for him: “There was a huge reduction of rates,” he recalled during an interview with Mortgage Professional America. “I was actually going to school at the time and had a good friend of mine who was one of those moneymakers. He had been a stockbroker and started doing mortgages. He came to my house one day and showed me his paycheck, and he had just made $10,000.”
He decided then and there to pursue the field. “I love math, I love numbers,” he said. “I’ve always had a gift for the gab and was always good at sales. But I didn’t know anything about real estate or mortgages.”
Early on, he was hired at Old Merchants Mortgage Bankers where he worked as a branch manager. From there, he did another five-year stint at Intercontinental Capital Group. Other stints would follow at United Mortgage Group, Franklin First Financial and Nationwide Mortgage Bankers Inc.
Examining a mortgage career as living history
To talk to Gasper is to span the last quarter century of the mortgage industry with its ups and downs. “Back then, we didn’t even have computer software – we had to write with a note and notepad,” he said.
Despite such rudimentary tools, people were making money hand over fist – including Gasper, who was able to purchase his apartment-dwelling parents a home. “It did a lot for me and my family,” he said of the lucrative career. “Back then, the spreads on mortgages were more than they are now.”
It was the best of times: “I bought a million-dollar house for them in one of the best neighborhoods, and I was 23 years old. I was on top of the world. I thought I was invincible.”
And then the crash happened. “I literally went from having everything to having zero and not knowing what to do,” he said. “I went through a little bit of depression.” Scrambling for work, he accepted a job offer at Morgan Stanley, but at a fraction of what he made before.
Finding out what really matters
Gasper has long since experienced a reversal of fortune, now working at Madison Mortgage as a VP and mortgage loan originator. Earlier this year, he joined officials from United Wholesale Mortgage on the New York Stock Exchange trading floor to celebrate National Mortgage Brokers Day. He was invited to participate in the revelry after writing about a deal that resonated powerfully with him.
He recalled helping a newly divorced client who was in need of money to help pay off his former spouse. Ultimately, Gasper was able to save more than $10,000 for his client. “That was actually a recent file,” he said. “He was going through a divorce, and shopping around with different mortgage companies and banks.
“I gave him a 5.18%,” he recalled. “The other lender was in the high 5s like 5.875% to 5.99%. I gave him 5.18% on a $600.000 loan amount. That makes a big difference on your debt-to-income ratio, especially on a loan amount like that with a reduction rate of almost 1%,” he said. “It gave him more buying power to get his wife off the title of his house and restart his life. It was just a world of difference between the two loans.”
Gasper said he explored every way to save the client money: “Since it was a buyout, I structured it as a gift of equity. They own the home together – at that point his portion is his portion, her portion is her portion. My borrower, if he’s living in the house, it’s his primary residence. He doesn’t have to pay transfer tax. So, I saved him $14,000 in transfer tax as well.”
The ability to help people in such a meaningful manner alerted him to the more intangible rewards of his work beyond the lure of the cold hard cash.
“I’ve reached the point that that’s what matters to me,” he said. “I’ve worked at all these other companies, made all this money and done all this s***. But when I became a broker at UWM, you know how I feel when I come to work? I love my job. I love what I do every day. Why? Because I know what I provide to the client, the service I’m giving them and truly getting them the best of the best deals out there – from the bottom of my heart.”
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