From humble beginnings, Seattle broker now educates on wealth building
For many loan officers, giving back to the community while on the way up is but an aspirational goal. For Seattle-based Frances Nguyen (pictured), such altruistic tactics are routine.
Mortgage Professional America caught up with Nguyen a day after one of her regular speaking engagements. Either as part of her work at NEXA Mortgage or in her off time, she reaps fulfillment from educating people about the housing industry, she said.
“It was a good turnout – a bunch of real estate agents and lenders were there,” she reported. “We talked about how we can win in this market. It’s nice to help people, especially with the shift in the market now.”
In addition to her work as a loan officer, Nguyen is also a real estate investor – with a focus on multifamily housing – through her eponymous Frances Nguyen Group. She described her efforts in advising on this front toward a wealth-building goal via monthly meetings with community members.
“We get people in the community together to learn about investing and just networking with other people in making contacts,” she said. “I do a lot of outreach work.”
That work extends beyond the boundaries of her Seattle base. As an extension of her work with AREA – the Asian Real Estate Association, she recently traveled to Washington, DC, to advocate for underserved communities, meeting with US Rep. Kim Schrier and US Rep. Adam Smith. A current focus in such advocacy is to dissuade representation of Asians as monolithic but rather as a diverse patchwork of distinct cultures, each suffused with unique dynamics, characteristics and needs.
One area she advocates with some clients is the importance of credit: “With the Asian culture, a lot of them believe that cash is king, and to not have any debt,” she said. “By doing that, though, they hurt themselves because they’re not building credit and can’t buy a house. So that’s one of the things I’ve been working on is helping underserved communities gain homeownership. It’s a lot harder, but also very rewarding working with immigrant families.”
It all began at home
To understand what makes Nguyen tick is to delve not just into her professional approach but into watershed moments from her personal narrative as well. Her intimate knowledge of the Asian community comes by virtue of being the child of Vietnamese immigrant parents who brought her to the US when she was two years old, she noted.
“Growing up, my parents didn’t have much,” she recalled. Yet they scraped enough money to buy a home in which she spent her formative years, before buying it from them when she was 26 – her first real estate transaction. She lived in the home for a year before renting it out after buying her second property.
“I started building my real estate portfolio that way,” she said. “Without my parents buying that first home, I would have never bought it, and that was the home that became the start of my real estate investment journey. It really shaped who I am today because now I’m a real estate investor and lender, helping people on how to strategize to expand their own real estate portfolios.”
Panic sets in during the Great Recession
After that youthful purchase, she was well on her way – until the Great Recession hit. Those who experienced the era know firsthand how brutal it was, yet Nguyen regrets the panic that overtook her. Her remembrances recall the dire conditions at the time and yield a glimpse into her competitive streak.
“I got scared,” she said, describing an eight-year detour in the area of public health after having earned a degree in the discipline from the University of Washington in 2005. “I actually regretted and realized that I needed to focus on financial independence. Even though it was the safe thing to do, I should have taken that risk, stayed in the game and continued because I would have picked up so many more properties in 2012 when it hit bottom. I didn’t think of it that way.”
The AIME is clear
But all’s well that ends well as Nguyen’s impressive accomplishments clearly illustrate. She described finding further fulfillment via membership in the Association of Independent Mortgage Experts (AIME).
“When I think about AIME, I think collaboration and community,” she said. Nguyen pointed out the group’s “brokers are better” platform as particularly useful in learning how colleagues approach various transactions. “I gain so much information and knowledge there,” she said. “Everyone is helping and supporting each other at AIME, and you can learn so much from tapping into that community.”
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