He switched to wholesale after a buddy stole a client from him
With his tattoos and outgoing personality, Brian Decker (pictured) had the acute self-awareness to realize he wasn’t cut out to be the accountant he’d studied to become. The next logical step for him was the mortgage industry.
“Right out of college I was actually becoming a CPA, and was hired by one of the big four accounting firms,” he said. “I was a little too outgoing and social to be an accountant, so I ended up making the move.”
The move was to the mortgage industry in 2004, right after his college graduation. “So I got into the industry in 2004, and then worked in the independent mortgage broker space just for a brief couple of years.” Just four years later, the Great Recession would rear its ugly head: “And when everyone got out of the industry in ’08, ’09, ’10, I hunkered down and grabbed a lot of market share.”
His skill at adaptation served him well as the housing industry collapsed around him: “I was a call center loan officer in 2004 to about 2009,” he recalled, “and then moved into the retail world in 2009. By 2010, I was one of the top 10 loan officers in the country because I just hunkered down and refused to give up and took an ever-changing market and adjusted to it. And then I spent a number of years – a long time, actually – on the retail side, working for a couple of different companies but most notably spending about six years at Guaranteed Rate and then about three years at Loan Depot. I was a really, really heavy purchase originator for a long time and got to know the CEOs of those companies really well and was one of the top 20 guys in the county for about a decade.”
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Suddenly an epiphany emerged, mirroring a current trend: He decided to go from retail to wholesale. “In about 2019, I kind of had my eyes opened a little bit,” Decker recalled. “A good friend of mine had opened up an independent mortgage broker shop and had taken a client from me – and we were good buddies! He was, like: ‘Hey, man. I’m not trying to take a client from you but your rates are like three quarters of a percent higher than mine, man. They’re my neighbor. Are you sure you can’t do any better than that?”
His inquisitive nature took over after that incident: “I get paid the same amount of money no matter what rate I give a client,” he recalled telling his friend. “There’s no way I can do that. It kind of opened up my eyes, and I asked him: What bank are you using, by the way? He said ‘I’m using UWM [United Wholesale Mortgage]’. I knew who they were, but I didn’t, like, really know. So I looked and started to kind of investigate. Oh my gosh! There was a substantial difference in interest rates. So I ended up joining and decided to open my own mortgage bank. I was the first big retail loan officer in the industry to make the move from retail to wholesale because at that time, of the top 25 loan officers in the country, they were all retail.”
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He was somewhat ahead of the curve, given the current trend of brokers leaving retail for wholesale in droves. He said recent data via the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) showing consumers reap savings of more than $9,000 with wholesale brokers strengthened his belief of having done the right thing in switching sides. “Everything I had originally thought about the world of wholesale I kind of realized was just – I don’t want to say a lie because I don’t want to put anybody down. My eyes were opened up to the truth rather than being boxed into what I was taught. Like: ‘oh, they don’t have good technology. Oh, they don’t have any control over their loans. Oh, their turn times take 50 days. Oh, you don’t have any product.’ I looked up and was, like, whoa. This is a totally different world.”
Today, Decker’s Modern Lending shop is in 13 states, and pulled in some $800 million in volume last year, he said. Clearly, the switch paid off for him.
