How can originators keep their pipelines full?

Speaker1: [00:00:14] Welcome to the latest edition of MPA TV. I'm Richard Torne, MPA's U.S news editor, and today we're going to be talking to one of America's most successful loan officers. Indeed, over the last six years, he has become one of the top five loan originators in the country, having consistently broken records and funded a career volume well in excess of $7 billion. I hesitate with that last figure because that was back in early December, and no doubt that number is considerably higher now. We're talking about Boston based Hello, Shant Banosian. Hello and welcome, Shant.

Speaker2: [00:00:49] Thank you very much for having me. I'm honored to be here and I'm looking forward to it.

Speaker1: [00:00:54] When researching your career, it's a bit difficult to pin you down to records because we're having to continually update them, it seems. Last December, we noted that you had become guaranteed rates first ELO to fund $2 billion in total loan volume. You've also been guaranteed rates number one originator for the past six years. And last June, just six months before your latest record, you funded $1 billion for the second consecutive year. And that was a record you achieved in less than six months. So before I ask you about your recipe for success, I think the best place to start is at the beginning. Tell us how you got started in the mortgage industry in the first place because I think the answer will surprise a lot of people.

Speaker2: [00:01:34] Yeah, you know, I was you know, it's it's one of those stories where, you know, I just graduated from college as an undergrad locally here just outside of Boston and the school called Bentley College at the time. It's not Bentley University. And I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do. You know, I was just working. I was working my first kind of job as property management. I was working nights in the entertainment industry and I thought I had this great idea that I wanted to quit everything I was doing and go to law school. And so while I was studying for, you know, getting ready for law school and all that kind of stuff, I ran into a friend of mine that was had. It was also a Bentley grad that was in the mortgage business was telling me how great it was. And at the time, he knows the housing boom across the country. And, you know, it sounded like a really exciting and fun career. So I decided to jump right in and give it a shot. And I, you know, truthfully, I fell in love with it immediately. It fulfilled kind of all my

needs in terms of helping serve others. There was a competitive environment to it. I was learning. I like finance and it just really grabbed my attention and I was really able to move myself through.

Speaker2: [00:02:40] That company was a regional based lender. And things were able to progress pretty quickly. And I just loved everything about it. And then unfortunately, you know, 2007 2008 happened where the whole mortgage crisis across the United States, you know, happened. And very quickly, almost overnight, I was out of a job unemployed and trying to figure out what my next move was. And you know, I live in Boston Big Tech hub. Everybody was urging me to get out of this crazy mortgage business, and I'm still relatively young to do maybe something like software sales. You know, Boston is home base to companies at the time, the oracles and the mix of the world, and it was like, you know, go get a software sales job or hardware, whatever it was at the time. And forget about this business. And I just really enjoyed it and I wanted to give it one more shot. And I convinced a company to give me a shot, and we opened up a small branch with, you know, two of us in there and the rest is history. Know we didn't really know what we were doing at the time. We had to learn a lot. The industry was literally changing. Every single day is guidelines were getting compressed. Investors were disappearing. Everything changed. And it was a really looking back on it. It was an amazing time. So you really get started as a retail loan originator because you had to foundationally just become really good at everything.

Speaker2: [00:04:00] And the education I got in those two to three years were very formative in terms of my success going forward, and it was a really great time in a lot of ways. You know, when they when they talk about, you know, like you hear, like Warren Buffett, say, like when you're investing, you know, you want to run in while everybody else is running out and vice versa. Well, that's kind of what what I had done at the time where I kind of went all in on the mortgage business when everybody was getting out, seemingly not just loan originators, but companies and the industry shifted overnight, and it ended up being a great time to really get it and get in and build a foundation around it. And and every year thereafter, we've done more business originally. You know, it's funny. I started wanting to do business in two to three or four towns and then eventually kind of worked myself into the cities. And now and then, then we would do business in a couple of other states. And now, you know, going on, it's been almost really kind of really 14 years for me as like a retail loan originator. And now we're licensed in all 50 states doing purchases and refinances all across the country.

Speaker1: [00:05:01] Now, any mortgage broker watching this must be itching to know what the secret sources. Having interviewed you before, I know that you're very methodical, a stickler for detail and you like researching your subject matter. Isn't that right?

Speaker2: [00:05:14] Yeah. You know, I think the secret sauce. Look, I think is a couple of things, it's not one thing, right? It's it's impossible. One I'd say is extremely like just a dedication to your craft in terms of just hard work and discipline, like, you know, especially when I first got going, you know? You know, it was just being on twenty four seven and like, whether you like it or not or whether people like to hear that or not, like, that's just what it was like, you know, so I was willing to do things that other people weren't willing to do in order to establish my business. And that meant being on at nights weekends like literally all the time. So I can honestly say for the first, you know, and throughout my career, I've outworked my competition for sure, like purely just from an effort standpoint, right? Secondly, you know, there's only so much you can do, and I talk about this a lot whenever I'm interviewed, it's like, you know, there's only so much you can do as a standalone loan officer, right? Like, you know, if you're just a salesperson, you have a ceiling.

Speaker2: [00:06:05] And how I've consistently broken through the ceiling is like, I've really tried to act like a CEO and running a business and not just focusing on sales or leads. It's been focused on all the things sales, operations, business development, marketing, branding, customer retention. You know, all of those things, right? And constantly working on the business. So I know that sounds like a cliché, but the reason that cliché is there because it works right, like you have to work on your business and move it forward. And then lastly, I'd say I've surrounded myself with, like these really amazing teammates right again. There's only so much one person can do. Right? I'm just, you know, the reason. And when you talk about numbers like a billion and two billion, clearly it's not just me, right? Like, I have this like super successful team of smart, intelligent, hardworking, reliable, good character people that I surround myself with. And we're always looking to find new people to add to the team that help deliver a better client experience to our referral partners and our clients. Right.

Speaker1: [00:07:02] So like that's also because they they enjoy working with you because.

Speaker2: [00:07:07] Yeah, yeah. I mean, you're right. I hope so. You know, that's what I strive. You know, we try to make it a good environment. We try to give value, right? In terms of like whether it's them personally and professionally in terms of just getting better. So that's stuff that we talk about. That's important to me because like, you know, I got I'm lucky in the sense that, you know, I grew up always playing team sports, right? And so like a lot of the things I learned as like literally as a kid, whether it was in high school younger than that at college, you know, being in team sports is always helpful. And I use a lot of those lessons that I learned in kind of just creating like a really great team environment today. And, you know, that's always a work in progress. So I think that helps for sure.

Speaker1: [00:07:48] We know this year brokers are facing challenging times with higher interest rates and inflation plummeting refi volume, and buyers also have to contend with the long standing issues of low housing stock and rocketing home prices. What can brokers do to keep their pipelines full and help borrowers to secure their dream home?

Speaker2: [00:08:06] Yeah, I would say that, you know, the the biggest challenge right now is that it's another year where we're going to have a lot of change, right? And so like, you know, I think that everybody gets focused on like what's going to change this year? But if you look at back, if you look back over the last couple of years, like in twenty twenty. You know, we all had to work remotely. We all rates plummeted. We were all understaffed. Volume went through the roof, right? And that was that. Year's change guidelines changed. Programs change rates fluctuated. Twenty twenty one was kind of a little bit like it was just like a massive year in terms of perfect storm in terms of purchases and refinances hitting at the same time. And you know, that was it. This year, it's just a different kind of change, you know? So I think part of it is like the biggest challenges here is going to be mindset, right? It's going to be all about like being gritty, being able to handle it. Like, generally speaking, you know, if you look at if you look at business books, right, there's hundreds and hundreds of Best-Selling business books or personal development books about how to handle change because most people don't handle it well. So I think part of it is like just getting the right mindset for it. But in terms of from business structure, certainly you're going to have to focus on the purchase side of the business, the Pfizer draft.

Speaker2: [00:09:13] You know, people I've seen people say, you know, refi is going to disappear by 30 percent, 40, 50, 50 percent, it's going to be bigger than that. You know, the way rates are going up, like so many people have refinanced already multiple times, they're going to be in these low rates. So I think on the refinance side, if you want to increase that volume, you're going to have to get really, really good at cash out refinances and finding opportunities there. But really, it's going to be two things. One, developing, cultivating your database of previous clients and really just letting them know that you're there. If they want to move, if they want to have an evaluation of whether they should refinance cash out or just get pre-approved for a new purchase, second home investment property and then secondly, just develop a bigger database of referral partners, right? And like I know, it sounds super simple, but like, that's it. Those are the three things that you have to do in order to grow your business. And yeah, are you going to have to work harder this year than you did in twenty twenty and twenty or twenty one to less volume or do the same amount of volume? Absolutely. And if you're not OK with that, then you're probably going to have some difficulties if you're OK with that.

Speaker2: [00:10:17] Well, it's going to create a massive opportunity to grab market share. This is going to be one of those career defining years. We're going to be able to look back and say, I grab more market share this year, and that's why I was able to thrive in the future. Just like, you know, twenty eighteen, I wouldn't have had the success that I had in nineteen twenty and twenty twenty one if we didn't really step up to the plate in twenty eighteen when rates were rising. We forget that rates went up from the low 3s all the way to almost five percent in twenty eighteen. Well, you know, we stepped up, we did a lot of business. We didn't do as much business as we did the following years, right? However, because we laid a great foundation, we were ready for it and we captured it when the opportunity presented itself. That's what's going to happen this year. We're going to have to grind. We're going to have to work hard. We're going have to be smarter, more strategic. And maybe the path is not going to be as big. But you know, the people that step up in twenty twenty two, there's going to be massive payoff on it from a career standpoint going forward.

Speaker1: [00:11:11] Well, that's truly excellent advice, which I'm sure we'll be appreciated by many mortgage professionals across the country. Thank you so much for joining us today and may you continue to break records for a long time to come.

Speaker2: [00:11:23] Yeah, you're very welcome. This is fun. I appreciate you always supporting me and having me here. You know, I look forward to doing this in the future yet.

Speaker1: [00:11:31] Thank you, too, to all our viewers for tuning in today. I've been your host, Richard Torne, and we hope you'll join us again soon for another edition of MPA TV. May you all have a happy and successful week. Goodbye!