He took ownership of his fate, both literally and figuratively
It’s not often one meets someone who entered the mortgage industry from the very start of their career. Usually, people become intrigued in the field as they embark on their own home purchase or are encouraged by someone already in the industry to give it a shot.
For Robert Mahaffey (pictured), of Ohio-based 3rd Street Financial Corp., the idea of entering the mortgage industry was cooked up over dinner during a spell of unemployment. In the 20 years since he began, Mahaffey has experienced seminal moments in the field – from the subprime mortgage crisis to the halcyon days of record-setting refinance activity, to mercurial mortgage rates amid inflation. If you ask him, he’s loving every minute of it.
Mahaffey also fits the profile of one who landed into the field by happenstance.
“I got out of college, and I was working for an IT solutions provider as a national account executive,” he told Mortgage Professional America during a telephone interview. “We were doing nationwide POS [point of sale] rollouts. This was early 2000s, and this was the thing – putting point of sales in hair salons, subways and Lens Crafters and all that stuff. This dates me a little bit, but I was also doing some fascinating things with PalmPilot rollouts,” he said with a chuckle in referencing the once-ubiquitous gadgets that have long given way to today’s smartphones.
Early misgivings give rise to new career
Right from the start, something didn’t feel right as he pedaled his wares. “The company was publicly traded,” he noted. “I was 22, 23 years old and being in a sales position, you feel encouraged to push sales even when products are not ready and customers are not ready for invoices,” he said. “It created some unnecessary stress.”
He quit the job. “And my wife and I were at dinner with some friends, and he was in the mortgage business as a broker,” he recalled. “He said ‘what are you going to do?’ I said ‘I honestly don’t know.’ Ultimately, I decided to take a chance and get into the mortgage industry and found that I liked it a lot.”
It was 2003, and the company for which he worked was Randall Mortgage. Right away, he was more comfortable with the strict parameters of personal finance versus the abstraction of corporate production based on unrealized profits. “When you’re in personal finance – and mortgage specifically – you’re dealing with people’s personal budgets, and it has to fit. And there’s always a need for it. So unless the house is paid off you’re looking at how the mortgage payment fits in the monthly budget. And yes, people sometimes have individual spending freezes, but at the time we were still doing refinances where we could help people save money on a monthly basis. I loved it. I jumped right in and took off.”
Taking ownership of his fate
Still, he longed to own his own business. As fate would have it, that quest also would be realized serendipitously. Regulators at the time required those seeking ownership to have been in the industry for three years, so he was poised to hang his own shingle upon meeting the requirement in a few months’ time. A blast from the past would help accelerate the ownership quest.
“My manager at Randall had left and started a company called 3rd Street Financial,” he said. “He was struggling in 2006 by purchasing internet leads, and it was a very cutthroat type of business model that he had. He walked into my office at Randall – we remain very good friends – and asked if I was still starting my own company. I said ‘absolutely’.” His former office mate said he was readying to dissolve his firm unless he wanted to take it over. Mahaffey called the regulatory agency to seek clarity on the two options, learning that it would take up to six weeks just to merely approve the name of a new company before even accepting an application for ownership. A change of ownership, however, could be turned around inside of 30 days.
You might have already ascertained what he ended up doing. “I bought the company. Licenses were set to renew in April, so I paid the prorated four months of licensing for the company. It was already an established S-Corp., and the only asset that came with it – again dating myself – was a Calyx Point CD,” he said, laughing at the memory. That was it: A compact disc from the cloud-based servicing platform that helps users with loan and marketing processes. “Because when you had a Calyx Point subscription, they send you a CD in the mail to install the updates.”
Since taking ownership Jan. 1, 2007, the company has grown to be licensed in eight states and employs a staff of 13. “I still originate and run the company and also do professional sales coaching for an industry-related coaching company,” he said with palpable pride. The ownership transfer option proved to be the right option, so it’s a good thing Mahaffey said he didn’t hate the name – a reference to the street where the former owner’s mother-in-law lived in Florida with a numerical branding ensuring high placement in directories back when that too was a thing, like those PalmPilots.
He credits the Association of Independent Mortgage Experts (AIME) for its support along the way. “You can go to the ‘Brokers Are Better’ Facebook page and post your scenario, and within minutes people are helping you figure out your problem. AIME has helped me significantly.” The admiration appears mutual, as AIME recently bestowed Mahaffey with one of its Impact Awards for making strides in the wholesale channel. He also was named a “state captain” for Ohio by AIME, with an eye of helping effect positive mortgage legislation as part of his advocacy role.
