Broker even ran a bed and breakfast before venturing into the industry
Deneen Bernard (pictured) took a circuitous route in getting to the mortgage industry, going from Wall Street to running a bed and breakfast, before venturing into the field and even enduring a bankruptcy as part of her experience.
“I was working for the New York Stock Exchange for 16 years,” she told Mortgage Professional America during a telephone interview. “I landed a very nice, cushy job working in their government relations office in [Washington] DC. We took congressional people up to Wall Street, gave them tours and talked to them a little bit about the industry. I loved it and did it for many, many years.”
But, as John Lennon famously wrote, life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans. As it happened, Bernard grew tired of the commute and was wanting to start a family. “I wondered: What am I going to do now?” she said. “My mom happened to have an inn in Maine. My dad went fishing out there and told her he had bought an inn. So when I decided to retire from the exchange I told my mom: let’s run a B&B together.”
An abrupt change of plans
A major renovation to the place turned it into a reproduction of the historic home of George and Martha Washington, where her parents also lived with her and her husband. “We couldn’t find an old house to renovate,” she said. “We ended up building a replica of Mt. Vernon and had weddings there and did a lot of catering. It was a wonderful experience.”
But then a serious car collision on one of those winding country roads put her out of commission, and ended her days as an innkeeper. “I took a couple of years off and home schooled my kids.” But eventually, she needed to get back to work: “My husband asked, ‘are you ever going back to work?’ A relative actually worked as a Wells Fargo loan officer and she said ‘you know what, you got a background in finance, you’re personable. Why don’t you consider the mortgage industry?’ And so I took a course, went to boot camp, got hired and never looked back.”
In the 20 years since, Bernard has worked at a handful of companies. Her first job was at American Home Loans in Tyson Corners, Va., before moving on to stints at Carteret Mortgage Corp., Dynamic Capital Mortgage Inc., Prime Residential Mortgage (then called Jacob Dean Mortgage Inc.) and Advantage Mortgage Group among others.
Surviving the Great Recession
The Great Recession hit while she was at Carteret Mortgage – the once mighty lender that was unable to survive the mortgage meltdown. As she described it, the event was a true test of her mettle.
“They closed up,” she said of Carteret. “Nobody was getting mortgages; everybody was losing their homes. My husband was selling Mercedes vehicles – nobody was buying those. We lost multiple homes and went through bankruptcy. We went through some hard times. But at the end of the day my husband and I looked at each other like: we have each other, we have our health, we have our family, we have our faith. So we just kept going. We had to move home with my parents again – which was fine!”
Those dark days are past, which make living through the current down market anticlimactic, she suggested. Since 2014, she’s been with Motion Mortgage Inc., with the luxury of working from home. “That gives us a lot of advantages now that I’m taking care of her,” she says of her mom, now a widowed 87-year-old who now lives with her in an apartment next to the retirement villa where she and her husband live. “We meet for happy hours,” Bernard said with a laugh.
As a certified mortgage planning specialist at Motion Mortgage Inc., Bernard has distinguished herself with her work helping first responders and veterans with the “Homes for Heroes” team. Since 2018, she has closed more than 200 transactions – saving over $341,000 for military, law enforcement and first responder clients.
At 62, Bernard derives fulfillment from her career with both financial and personal rewards. “You get paid very well for what you do – that part attracted me. We’ve made a lot of money and then there were those bad years – this year being one of them when things have slowed down.”
But it’s not like the dark days of the Great Recession, she noted: “I’m very fortunate. I enjoy what I do. I don’t have to rely on the income. If I do a loan or two a month, great. If I don’t do a loan, I’m not going to starve.”
Want to make your inbox flourish with mortgage-focused news content? Get exclusive interviews, breaking news, industry events in your inbox, and always be the first to know by subscribing to our FREE daily newsletter.
