Amy Slotnick, Regional SVP at Fairway Mortgage Corporation

0:00 The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests, and not those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements radio show, programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability explicitor implied shall be extended to W four cy Radio or it's employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W FOURCY Radio. Churchill said, those who failed to learn from history are condemned to repeat it. Kevin Helenan believes that certainly applies to business. Welcome to Winning Business Radio here at W four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com and now your host, Kevin Helena. Thanks everyone for joining in again today. I am Kevin Hallanan and welcome back to Winning Business TV and radio on the W fourcy dot com. We're streaming live on talkfo tv dot com in addition to Facebook and that's at Winning Business Radio, as well as available in podcasts after the live show on many platforms including YouTube, iHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple, pretty much wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. The mission of winning business radio and TV, as regular listeners and viewers know, is to offer insights and advice to help people avoid the mistakes of others, right to learn best practices. That's the how tos, the what too's, the

1:30 what not tos. To be challenged and certainly to be inspired, hopefully at least by the successes of others. But you know, virtually every successful person I've ever had a chance to talk to has had some form of failure in their lives and careers. So listen. While we all have to get our knees skinned once in a while, I say it every week, I'm driven to keep those scrapes from needing major surgery. Let's endeavor to learn from history so we don't repeat it today. My guest is Amy Slotnik, Regional SVP at Fairway Mortgage Corporation. Here's your bio. Amy Slotnink brings more than forty years of mortgage industry experience to her clients and business partners. She joined Fairway in two thousand and seven and quickly became the company's top producing loan originator, a title she held for multiple years. In twenty fourteen, Amy assumed the additional responsibilities of branch management, where she dedicates her time to assisting her loan officers in their professional growth, as well as continuing to I Can Talk to originate loans and provide excellent service to her own clients. Further, she dedicates time to Fairway's internal coaching company, Fairway Ignite, where she acts as a coach to several of Fairway's originators. She began her career in the mortgage industry as an underwriter and quickly gained experience in every facet of the industry, including operations, sales, management, and ownership. She believes that education and customer service are the keys to success in the mortgage industry. She puts her many years of experience to work for customers to keep them confident and informed throughout the process. Within Fairway, Amy has continuously been recognized as part of Fairway's Chairman's

3:04 Club. She's been recognized consistently by industry leaders as part of the top one percent of loan originator's nationwide, as a Scotsman Guide Top Originator, and as a multiple year recip recipient of the Five Star Professional Award. In addition, she's been featured in several industry public publications and is often called upon for commentary as well as industry insight. Her proudest recognition was being the first recipient of the Daryl Jacobson Courage and Business Award, which recognizes those within the company who've demonstrated immense courage in their business endeavors. Amy's a graduate of Simmons College with degrees in economics and political science. She resides in Brookline with her husband Dan, and takes every opportunity to visit their daughter Sarah, son in law Matt, and grandson Davis in Washington, d c. Oh and don't don't forget her grand dog Calli. She can be found happily enjoying the sunshine on Nantasket Beach, where she was raised during the summer months. For those side of New England and Massachusetts. That's on the south shore of Massachusetts. Amy, Welcome to Winning Business TV and Radio. Thanks for being here. Thanks Kevin Grady to have a little fun. Sure it's a really good conversation. So first I'll ask a little bit about family. Tell us about Dan. Sure, tell you about Dan. So Dan and I have been married for coming on thirty eight years this summer some might say we were high school sweethearts.

4:26 I would say we dated for a very short while our senior year in high school. We all tell a different story, right right, right, and then reunited on the beach in Nantasket right after graduating college and have been together ever since. Dan was in the insurance business, property and casualty, until he retired a few years back to take full time care of his mom, who we were fortunate enough to have lived with us until her last days. So he now enjoying retirement. Very nice, very nice. So my wife says she's semi retired, she's retired. She she only works for me a little bit. She's retired, and daughter Sarah tell us about Sarah. Sure, So Sarah's about to celebrate her thirty third birthday, which I can't even believe. I'm saying. She lives with her husband, Matt, as you said, her husband of five plus years, and their seventeen month old son, Davis, and I would be remiss and she would be angry if I didn't mention Callie, who I think is eight years old now, beautiful dog.

5:34 Never would get Sarah a dog while she was growing up. Kevin and we used to always say we'll see, we'll see, we'll see. And Richie got moved out and immediately got her own dog, named her Callie, And I was like, you sure you don't want to name her will see, because that was always the dog that we would talk about. We'll see. But yeah, So she actually also works for Fairway Independent. Morgage is a regional marketing director and works with the teams in Delaware and the Washington DC area of Virginia and Maryland. And I am also fortunate enough to have her doing all of my social and marketing. Nice. That's perfect. I love that. All right, Let's get a little bit of background. You grew up on the South Shore. I did year round in Hall, Massachusetts, not just summer, right, Yeah, tell the audience. Those that are local would know, but others would not tell the audience about Hall, mass Sure, So whatever you want to tell. Let's say Home, mass is a peninsula somewhere about in the middle between Boston and the Cape. We'll do that, about eighteen miles or so south of Boston. It's a very small community that virgins in the summer months when people from all over Massachusetts and outside of Massachusetts come to live on this beautiful peninsula that is surrounded by water on three sides. Since it's a peninsula, beach is called Nantasket Beach. I

7:05 know that's beautiful. Which used to be famous for I'm leading the witness here. He used to be famous for Paragon Park, which was I'm glad I can fill in the blanks and I know what you're leading me to. So Paragon Park was an amusement park, the largest and I think maybe only amusement park in the greater Boston area. I can't recall quite when they sold Paragon, but it was many years ago. But most of the people I grew up with worked at Paragon or hung around at Paragon through our teenage years. It really was People would take the boat from Boston to Nantasket from all over to come to the giant roller coaster. And of course, in my memories, I that roller coaster was enormous, but I'm sure it really wasn't quite that big, right, But it was a wooden It was a wooden roller coaster. Yeah, and I think it was actually in Virginia for a while, but I don't know if it's still in existence or not. Yeah, But the one thing that that is really cool is that there was a beautiful carousel there and the town was able to raise enough money to buy the carousel and they refurbished it, and the carousel is still in operation at the beginning of town, and you can go and ride the original beautiful horses that have just been repainted and refurbished. Yeah, that's pretty well. Yeah. I think that may have been on an episode of Almost, said Cagney and Lacy.

8:39 No Risolian Isles, remember that show. No, it was a cop show, Austin based cop show. Anyway, tell us about your early interests. So say, I'm going to ask you in a moment why you decided to major in economics and polyscide. But even before that, you know, what would you do when you're in high school? What did you like to do then? And then you can finish that with what led you to economics and polsci? Sure, so in high school, so I always loved I'll say that I am the daughter of an attorney and an English teacher, so I always loved to write, whether it was articles or poetry. So I was very involved in the high school newspaper and was editor of the high school newspaper. And actually both of my brothers, who are both older than me, were also editors of the newspaper. I was involved in the theater, and those who know me well are not surprised to know I was also on the cheerleading squad. I attempted to play softball, but really was just a good third based coach, not really a very good athlete, and I regard I'm going to admit, was always very interested in working with people the social work area. Thought that might be what I went into and come back to.

9:58 That worked all from the time I was twelve until I went to college in a sub shop or a restaurant, from cooking to waitressing to managing. I worked for the same family for those years and even for a couple of summers when I came back from college. Really didn't know what I wanted to do when I graduated high school, but knew I wanted to, as cliche as it sounds, be in a field where I would be helping people, and I thought that might be social work. Went to Simmons, accepted their acceptance kind of on a fluke. Really wanted to go on a state certainly never considered going to a single sex institution, but it was in the big city. It was in the big city, and we were not city dwellers.

10:52 My family really my parents didn't go into the city a lot, so I really didn't know Boston. In fact, I so clearly remember getting lost in the fen Way when we were trying to find Simmons. So, for those who don't know, Simmons basically sit smack in the Fenway area. It's probably a half a mile walk to Fenway Park, but it's also surrounded by three or four other colleges and universities. And I remember my father being completely lost on Boylston Street and the Fenway and Simmons was literally behind us like a block. So not big city dwellers. But I went on a tour. There was another girl I went to high school with who hadn't been accepted yet, but they had invited her to come, and she said, why don't you come with me. I'm like, I'm not going there, and she's like, well, just come with me anyhow. So I went, and I have to tell you, I walked into that tour and in twenty minutes I just said to myself, this is where I'm going. There was something about the energy, and even though it was really the opposite of everything I thought I wanted. I thought I wanted to know big school college sports, co ed. It spoke to me, and you know, hindsight, being twenty twenty, it was really the best decision that I could have made for myself. And that education, I think, where it was just focused on your growth as a human and regardless of gender, really helped me when I got into the professional environment. So why economics and government? I have no

12:26 idea. I had looked at the business program, and then I looked at these that program and I was like, you know, I'm going to do a double major. I'll do economics and political science. It's well rounded. My parents were big believers in liberal arts educations. I didn't have a specific field. I didn't want to be a doctor or a veterinarian or anything that you had to specifically do sort of, you know, your undergraduate work designed to go to graduate school for so I figured, in a liberal arts and environment, those were two good choices, and so that's what I chose. Well, that's very good. I'll ask you one more question then we'll go to break. What was your first job. I mean, you've been in the mortgage business your whole career really, But what was your first job out of college. I worked for MGIC, which is mortgage Guarantee Insurance Corporate.

13:18 So even that was mortgage Okay that I didn't see that in your in your resume, but okay, so tell us about that company and what you do work. So I was looking for a job and went to work put my resume with a placement agency and they called and said, we haven't found you a job yet, but we need help in our office. Do you want to work for us this summer? So one thing, I love my dad to death, but he was definitely a little chauvinistic, and I remember him saying to me, Amy, you better take typing because you need to have those secretarial skills. So I did take typing in high school, which that was one of the most useful classes I took. I mean, I loved absolutely, but it really was today you can made money in college typing people's papers. So when I went to this placement agency, I had expressed that I could type. So they called and they're like, one of our secretaries is going out on maternity. Do you want to work here for the summer and do administrative stuff? And while you're here, we'll see your skill set.

14:18 We'll find you a job. Cool. I went there. I worked the job at MGIC opened up. I was basically a customer service representative. It was called the processor, but it was opening mail answering customer service questions. But we're talking about nineteen eighty three when the mortgage industry was just starting to really grow, and I very quickly moved into underwriting and they taught me how to underwrite. So that was my first job. Very good. All right, welcome back to your career progression. In a few minutes, or actually in one minute. We're going to take a break and we'll be back with Amy Slotnik in about one minute. You're listening to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helene on W four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com.

15:07 Don't go away. More helpful information is coming right up right here on Winning Business Radio. Have you ever dreamt of being on the radio, Well, now it's your chance. Be a radio show guest on the number one ranked internet radio station and promote you and your business for free. Yes you heard it, free business advertising right here on W four cy dot com. Call five six one five zero six four zero three one now to get booked on one of our shows. That's five six one five zero six four zero three one. Get your free advertising now. And now back to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helene presenting exciting topics and expert guests with one goal in mind to help you succeed in business. Once again, is Kevin Helenett. We're back with Amy Slotnik. She's the regional SVP at Fairway Mortgage Corporate. All right, so you stayed you somehow liked the mortgage business or it liked you.

16:18 I'm not sure which I think maybe a little of both. Yeah, yep, because then you landed at well, there may have been another job in there, but I'll just jump right to Northeastern Mortgage. You made it to associate vice president. We were there for five years. Tell us a little bit about that role. Sure. So when I was at MGIC, as I mentioned before break, I learned how to underwrite and I really thought, honestly that I wanted to go into sales. And I call that the dark side. I know. Right at the time, there was the senior account executive kept asking him when sales jobs would open to give me a shot. You know, the old you don't have enough expert, but you take me a job because yeah, you can't get experience, because no one will give you the job because you don't have experience, right, So always the big dilemma. So anyhow, it was clear they weren't going to let me go into sales, and there were things going on there where I didn't see opportunities for growth for myself. So I asked this same gentleman if he would find me a job at a mortgage company, because what I was doing was mortgage insurance underwriting, and so he did. He helped me find a job.

17:30 I went to work at Northeastern Mortgage, which at the time was one of the top four lenders in Massachusetts and one of the ten fastest growing lenders in the country. And I went in there as an underwriter and again mentioning this that the eighties was really when we started to see the advent of independent mortgage bankers, right, and people getting mortgages outside of just the true banking depository environment, and it was growing like crazy. And so I started as an underwriter. I quickly was promoted to head of underwriting and then to AVP of underwriting, and part of my job like, okay, we're going way back, Kevin, and you can appreciate this because I think we are born and bred in the same years that there were no computers, there was no internet.

18:21 So part of my job was to get, read, interpret, and disseminate Fanny May and Freddie Mack guidelines. And the dissemination part was to get in front of two hundred loan officers and explain the guidelines to them, which basically was telling them how to do their jobs right. And the environment between underwriting and sales was very different then. It was very wee. They if you were a salesperson, you didn't like underwriting because they were the ones who said no, they got in the way, right, and everybody works on commission, and they got in the way of your paycheck, even if they were right. So after many year years of sort of enough of being abused by salespeople of the eighties, I'm like, you know, I disseminated all this information. I understand this information better than any loan officer. I know, why don't I just become a loan officer and fulfill that goal of becoming a salesperson. So that's what I did. So I moved from underwriting into sales I stayed at Northeastern for a very short period of time. I always say that I went out on the road. I was making great in roads with people, but I wasn't getting business. And I asked and I and I tell everyone I coach, this is one of the most important questions.

19:41 If you're not getting business, you need to ask why, particularly when people appear to really like you and engage with you, but you're not getting business from them. Right, What is it that's preventing you from sending me business? Because I feel like we've developed a relationship, but I really want business as well. So I'm going to ask you this question, which you're about to answer, but I'm going to tell you. I'm going to ask you what lessons learned are along the way? So what did you learn? Yeah? So what I learned was to ask that question, right, And when I did, I got a response that was that as much as people liked me and wanted to work with me, they had not had a positive experience with the person who was before me, and that had sort of tainted their attitude towards the company. And I went and I thought about it, and it had been hard to go from underwriting to sales there because there were other salespeople who were like, what are you doing in sales now? So I decided to leave and I went which, I see, you did your research.

20:41 So I went to a small broker shop called First Financial and I was there for a few years and was fortunate enough to become their top salesperson. I was there first on the road salesperson. Prior to that, there was nobody sort of out called on realtors or financial advisors or attorneys to try to generate business. It was more just advertising and working wealth. So I became their first on the road loan officer and was there for a few years. Fantastic. So what's a lesson learned from that experience? From moving from the experience at First Financial outside new to sales, Yeah, I think, you know. I think the lesson throughout my career for me has been that the more knowledge you have a sale as a salesperson, the more customers you can attract. Right, because people aren't just looking for a transactional relationship in most transactions. Right in this kind of a transaction, they're really looking for or you need to show them that they're looking for a long term relationship and It's not just a transaction, right, It's not. I'm not going into the store to buy a head of lettuce. Right, doesn't matter where I buy that head of lettuce, I'm going to develop a relationship with an advisor who is going to have my best interests not only in this transaction, but hopefully

22:12 for future transactions as well. And I think what I learned during my period there was about showing people what I knew, being able to illustrate to them how that translated to what they should do and what their options were, right, and the importance of customer service in that environment, and what that meant. Yeah, there's an intimacy of that relationship. You're looking at their finances, their tax returns. You know, you're getting a pretty good picture there of their financial life. So you got to develop, as you said, that trust and that relationship. Yeah, it's really important. I mean people are sort of bearing their financial souls. And you know, I go back to saying that I wanted to be a social worker. I made a very clear decision not to go into any sort of master's program for that because I knew for myself that I would have too much difficulty separating myself from what I was hearing and learning from my clients, and I really didn't feel like I could effectively separate and that the impact on me personally would be too great.

23:18 As I look at my career here, I sort of say that what I became instead was a financial social worker, because people are burying their financial souls to you, and they have to be comfortable with that. Right. Your friends don't want to tell you what kind of money they have or what kind of money they make, Right, So if you can get to the point where even your friends trust you, you know that, right, you've sort of hit the mark on building trust and confidence. And one of the greatest things with a career with the length of career that I've had is that I'm now helping children and grandchildren of my clients from the eighties and nineties. Well, that's pretty cool. That's really cool. All right, You made it into ownership of a mortgage company at one point, tell us that how you got there? Sure? So, some of a couple of the people I had worked with at Northeastern Mortgage I remained very close with, and they had started their own mortgage company, and they recruited me over from First Financial and I opened a branch for them, and from there, with a few different steps along the way, with them, we decided to open a mortgage company, not just the two of them, but the three of us, and so they brought me into the ownership. It was under a different name.

24:38 We had gone someplace else after what they owned was I just forgot the Main Street Mortgage. I forgot the name of it for a minute. And then we went to Monument Mortgage, which was owned by the former president of Northeastern Mortgage. So the beginning years of my career, the first twenty five years of my with the exception of the five I spent at First Financial, I was with the same people from Northeastern Mortgage. So we went to Monument Mortgage, and then we decided the three of us to open what was called Mortgage Capital Solutions, and that was great. I had one partner who was in Florida. We were doing some lending in Florida. And then my other partner and I were in Lexington and we spent several years there, and then actually the three of us went back to Monument Mortgage. Right, So the mortgage industry rides the cycles of the economy, and so there was a period of time where it was very difficult to be just a small mortgage broker shop, and so we decided it was in our best interest to go back to Monument Mortgage and work there, and so we did that and that's where I stayed for ten years before I came over to Fairway. So I'm sure somebody won't like this statement, but you can always tell who's good in that in your industry because they've been around for a long time in spite of how difficult it is that you know in the lean years was what are the ones that sorry,

26:10 but the ones that aren't that good they leave the industry, right, yeahs that are lifers or that really know what they're doing, know how to survive, know how to make it work right, and they're there for a long time. It's the key to savings right and proper financial responsibilities right and putting things aside. And I think that's true of any business in which you work on which you work full commission, right, because the good years can be great, but the lean years can be horrible, right. And I think you know, we looked at tough years in the late nineties, we looked at tough years. You know, two thousand and eight, two thousand and nine, and then I would say in my career, last year was the worst that we've experienced in the industry, and not just because of lack of inventory, but just the different here on what happened in the pandemic, where we had to take our branch from twenty people to sixty five people just to keep up because there was so much demand in the pandemic. Years to this, you know, you're at the height and all of a sudden you're at the lowest level and constantly having to adjust staffing expectations, staffing expectations, staffing expectations to get to the point where you could sustain right and not have so much staff. And also this lack of inventory. It has been a real issue. So you had high interest rates, lack of inventory, a

27:41 lot of people in the industry who were struggling to make it, a lot of people who unfortunately got laid off because companies didn't have the need for that size of staffing anymore. So, Yeah, it's definitely definitely been a roller coaster over forty years, but in the end, it's been a really great one. One more question. This won't be a quick one, but it will be the last question before the next break. For the audience that is outside of Massachusetts in particular, New England in general, describe the conditions that create this lack of inventory. Well, sure, so the lack of inventory right now in Massachusetts and throughout the country has to do with interest rates, because you know, during the pandemic years, interest rates were in the high two s and low threes, and that's as low as I have seen them, as low as they ever were. And so right now, with interstrates having risen and rates being really at their height, they were in the high sevens. Right now they're right around mid to high sixes. There's not a lot of motivation for people to move right because you're going to give up your two and three quarter percent or three and a quarter percent interest rate for something in the high sixes or evans. So not a lot of motivation unless you have to move right for all of you know, life's unexpected service, need more room, need to downsize, need a change to school, something, mom, dad, whatever, right right, death, divorce, downsizing requirements

29:15 right, So, there isn't a lot of inventory. Also, within the greater Boston area, there's very little building we are not in an area of great Land, we're not Texas, We're not we're not other states that have all that, you're right, right, yeah, yeah, So there's there's not a lot of opportunity for building, and then when people do see building, it's often because it's a knockdown and you're talking about prices, you know, in the seven hundred to one point one million dollar price range in the in the surrounding areas of the city. But even as we move outside of the city, prices have only elevated. Here there are a lot of buyers, and so there is a lot of situations right now where buyers are like, well, I'm going to wait for interest rates to come down, and sellers are saying, well, I'm going to wait for interest rates to come down because before I become a buyer. But the reality is is that the demand is as high as it is that everyone's sitting on the fence that every time a property comes on, we're back in this brutally competitive situation where prices are being driven up right because you don't have one offer, you have multiple offers, and so we're in an incredibly competitive situation in a low inventory market.

30:30 So people are paying higher prices at higher interest rates if they're waiting. You know, people ask, is now the time to buy? Absolutely, if you can afford the payment that the mortgage you would need creates, now is the time to buy. You can always refinance when interest rates come down. But if you wait to buy, it's likely in our markets that you're going to spend more for the property, even if you spend a little bit less for the interest rate. One thing about real estate. I mean, I'm not in your business, but one thing about real estate, it tends not to go down in value, right, Yeah, particularly in markets surrounding a city. Sorry, my internet went off for a second. Did I go off? No? No, I don't know. I just saw light change a little bit. No, yeah, my screen is just my dark I apologize. You know, because Boston is sort of a medical mecca, if you will, and an academic mecca. There's always tremendous demand here, and there are always people transitioning into this city, so there's always a very high demand for housing and there's just not enough supplot. Yep, that's all right. Sorry, hold that thought right there. We will be back in about another minute with Amy Slotnik. You're listening to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helenet on W four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com. Don't go away. More helpful information is coming right up right here on Winning Business

32:04 Radio. The yp dot com website is your local search engine. If you're looking for a good restaurant, it can help you find the right one nearby with ratings and reviews. Or if your car breaks down, you can use the YP app to find the closest repair shop. Or maybe you're just looking for something to do on a Friday night. While it has great local coupons for all sorts of things in your area, no matter what, when or where. If you're looking for something, YP local search can help you find it. So go to yp dot com or download the app to search local, find local, and save local. And now back to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helenan presenting exciting topics and expert guests with one goal in mind to help you succeed in business. Here once again is Kevin Helena. We're back with Amy Slotnik, Regional RVP Regional SVP sorry RSVP at Fairway Mortgage Corporation.

33:07 What is your best advice for someone that may be considering a home, whether it's first home, second home, vacational right about now? Sure, So I'll start with get pre approved. You hear it, people talk about it all the time. What does it mean? Right? You want to understand what your true mortgage options are and for how much you can qualify, and getting preapproved helps you do that because what happens in the pre approval process is your credit is going to get checked. So if you have any credit issues, there'll be an opportunity for you to talk with your mortgage loan officer to see how those impact your ability to qualify. You're going to have your income and your assets and your liabilities check to determine eligibility. You know, very often people really aren't aware of how much they can or can't mortgage. And what's always interesting to me is very often what people want to spend is not the same as what they can mortgage. Right. So I'll have people call and say I want to know the absolute most I can mortgage, and I always start with what's the absolute most you want to spend on a monthly basis Because those two numbers don't always equate, right, Someone may in fact be eligible to finance two million dollars, but they only want to make a payment that is going to be generated by a seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars loan.

34:35 Right, we always want to know what are you considering for a budget, So when you get pre approved, you're a loan officer should be discussing what your budget desire is, not just what you can mortgage. And if you finish the conversation with just what you can mortgage and you don't really understand the payment, you're going to put yourself in a position where you might be making offers on properties you actually can't afford. So where do you start? So get pre approved? What does it mean to be pre approved? You can speak with a loan officer who will review all of that documentation and give you their interpretation of what you can get. But what we have at Fairway is what we call our Fairway advantage pre approval where you can actually apply for a loan without a property. So you go through the whole process. You make an application, you sign documents which do not create an obligation, and the loan officer reviews it. But the difference, Kevin, is that the underwriter then reviews it and issues and approval, so instead of just a pre approval by a loan officer who does not have credit risk authority, right, because people in sales can't also approve the transaction because there's just a small conflict there. It actually, yeah, I don't know why. It actually goes through the underwriting process. So now you're walking around with a pre commitment and you can say to a seller, I've already been through the underwriting process, right, so all I need is your house, And so puts those buyers

36:07 in a more competitive situation, more competitive advantage somewhere between having just a pre approval from a loan officer and having cash. Not as good as a cash buyer, because you still have to get an appraisal and the property has to appraise, but you're much better than someone who hasn't already gone through the process. The other advantage of that is we can close in two weeks time if you are he that was next question, yeah, right, So it helps to speed it up. It helps you to make a more competitive offer, because what every buyer needs now is to put themselves in the most competitive situation, and getting pre approved and getting pre under it and puts you in that position, right, you can close quickly. All you need is a contract and an appraisal. So first piece of advice is get pre approved. Second piece of advice is talk about your budget. If you're buying with a friend or a spouse or a partner or whomever you're buying with, understand what that budget is for your housing and what is housing. It's the principle and interest on your mortgage. It's your real estate taxes. It's any insurances, so always homeowners insurance, private mortgage insurance if you have less than twenty percent down, flood insurance if you're in a flood zone. And if you're buying a condo, the homeowner's association fee. That's your housing payment, and how will that fit into your lifestyle? Right If you are a homebody and all you want is to be in the house you want and you don't spend a lot

37:38 of other money, maybe you can allocate more of your income towards your housing payment. But if you're someone who likes to travel or shop a lot, or go out for fancy dinners, you have to think about that because buying a home can be a lifestyle change, and you have to buy into that lifestyle change as well, or modify your home search so that you can have good answer. Do you have any additional advice for someone that might be considering a second home, Yeah, make sure you can afford it, right, right? I mean basically, I think you know second home buyers. We saw a lot of people again during the pandemic, either they wanted to move out of their primary residence or because they were confined maybe with large families, or people they didn't want to be confined with, wanted second options, right, So they wanted a house at the beach, or a house in the mountains, or just an escape. So again, how does it fit into your overall financial plan? One thing that's really important is your mortgage is likely the largest financial obligation you will ever have, and you have to make sure that it fits into your entire financial objectives. Right, How does an impact your ability to save? How does an impact your ability to pay for tuition?

39:00 How does it impact your ability to retire? If you own two homes, you know, for how long do you expect to do that? Can you easily make those payments? If you are considering an employment change, maybe there's two people both employed, but one is going to stop working either because they're going to retire or you're just going to make that decision for family reasons. How will that impact your ability to pay one mortgage or two mortgages. So just being sure that it's not something that you're doing sort of just on a quick whim because it would be nice to be by the beach. It's good, all right. Tell us a little bit more about Fairway. How big is Fairway? It's national sure. Fairway is a national lender in all states, and depending upon what ranking or what magazine you're reading, we are somewhere between the number two and number four largest retail lender in the country.

39:57 We generally end up number one or two in government financing. So in our FAH volume or VA volume combined, we lend, as I said, in all fifty states on one to four family residential properties. We do government loans via USDA FAHA as well as Fannie May and Freddie Mack and John bo loans. Our company. You know, people talk about culture and it can be very cliche ish. Our company really lives by its core values, which are about speed, to respond to, humility, and service to the street. And we talk about service to the street. Our corporate team really provides.

40:43 It's not a tan it's like one hundred level of service to the branch managers, to the loan officers, so that we can in turn provide that service to our client base. I've been here for seventeen years and that is not by accident, and well, yeah, very and I will ultimately retire from here, though not in the next year or two. But this company, we also have three nonprofits and that's really at the core of the company. When people ask me about Fairway, I always say it has the biggest heart of any company that I've ever seen. We give to veterans every year.

41:29 I think last year we gave away fifty two service dogs, one a week to veterans. We have a nonprofit called Fairway Cares that was started to help employees provide care packages, packages of support and love and care to people who are going through hardship, medical illness, death, things of those sorts. So as an employee, you can just reach out and ask for a package to be sent, whether it's to a family member or a colleague or friend. And then we have also a foundation at Fairway so that if an employee of Fairway is going through something. I remember many years ago, we had employee lose her house in one of the wildfires, and just one email to the entire company and tens of thousands of dollars were raised by employees for this employee to help her rebuild. So the heart that runs through this company is not anything that I have ever experienced anywhere else, and it's that heart that keeps me here. There are two pieces of that. One is for performance.

42:37 I know Fairway's Chairman's Club that you've been a recipient of, probably multiple times. And I want you to talk about the Daryl Jacobsen Courage and Business Award. That's I googled that. That's an internal award. I didn't know that, and that's that's in honor of the founder. So tell us what one does to qualify or why one would be a recipient of that award. Sure, so say you like I got terry for a minute. So I always say that of all the accolades that I have been fortunate enough to be a recipient of here, that has been the biggest honor for me. So Daryl Jacobsen was the father of Stephen Jacobson, who is our CEO. And in twenty have to look, I think it's twenty fourteen or twenty fifteen.

43:28 I was honored to be the recipient of the inaugural award, and Steve created this award to acknowledge people in the company who had demonstrated strength and determination and courage in business. And in twenty fourteen, our manager decided to leave the company and our branch manager. And at that point in time, to be totally blunt, I was fifty two years years old, my daughter had been launched, I'd already owned a company and it already managed. I really was not interested in managing again. I was very happy in my own little narrow asylum. But through a series of circumstances, they asked if I would take over managing the branch, and I decided that I would for the primary reason that it gave others the opportunity to stay here who actually really wanted to stay.

44:31 So I think it was for that reason, and because in doing so, I know that I disappointed the person who was leaving, who was hoping that I would follow, and that was a big change for me, and emotional and difficult and a separation. And so he recognized that, and I was completely surprised to receive that award because again, it was the inaugural award, so it wasn't one of those things where you're like, oh, I wonder if I'll get this this year. Yeah. Right, And that really has been amongst many problem moments in my career and particularly here at Fairway, the proudest because that was chosen for the courage to decide to stay when it would have been easier to leave. Well, that's great, congratulations for that.

45:24 All right, tell us about Fairway Ignite. It's a company within Fairway. You're a coach, you've helped others talk about that, what that process looks like and what Fairway Ignite actually is. Sure. So Fairway Ignite was started several years ago. You know, there are a multitude of outside coaching companies that you know, people can use to improve their sales or specifically in the mortgage industry, there are many coaching opportunities, but Fairway Ignite came out of the desire to start our own innal coaching company and it is Fairway employees coaching other Fairway employees. So there are no outside coaches and we don't coach outside of the company. So employees, whether they're in sales or operations, and now I believe there's even some executive team coaching going on. Can get coached within Fairway Ignite. So there are one on one coaching, there's group coaching, there are masterminds. I've been fortunate enough to put together a class which we called the Perfect ten oh three and the ten O three is the name of a mortgage application where I've taught fifty to one hundred people at one time how to actually complete a mortgage application so that your clients can have success in getting approved. So we've done that class. We've done sales training for

46:55 brand new loan officers, taking them through both sales and what we refer to as technical training, so again, how to complete an application, how to understand guidelines, how to know how to qualify a client. It's really no good, Kevin, if you get someone to agree to apply for a loan and you have absolutely no idea how to pick the right loan for them or how they're going to qualify, because you need to understand that as you come into the business. So I've been fortunate enough to do those classes and those trainings as well as to have several clients that I coach one on one and just started a mastermind group with a couple of other loan officers to just have accountability for them or them to have accountability to me for what their goals are and how they're setting them and how they're achieving them. So have been a part of Fairway Ignite since its inception. And again one of those rewards here because you get to see you get to help people move through the process and then you get to see their successes as they climb the production ladder. Right.

48:00 That's really cool. So it's really it's really fun. So it's another give back. And I know you're a volunteer Molly Fitzgerald Memorial Fund and Jewish big brother, big sister. That's awesome. We are almost out of time. I've got time for probably two questions here. What do you like to do when you're not working? We know you like to visit DC? No, go ahead, We love to visit DC. Just came back from seeing my grandson and he now says the greatest word on the planet, which is Grandma. Nice there, So there's that. I love to work out, do pilates. I love to hang on the beach where I was born in Bred. I can't wait for one months. Fortunate to have a house at Nantasket Beach and my family still lives there. So that's wonderful as I'm surrounded by them in the summer and I like to read and obviously to spend time with my husband. I've got to make sure I say that though I don't good safe, say no, you don't good safe. Very fortunate to have a great set of girlfriends. Oh, that's awesome too. So who last two questions? Who in the listening and viewing audiences may want to reach out to you, and why and what's the best way for them to do that?

49:12 Sure, So anyone who is contemplating the purchase of a home, whether it's in a week or a year or two years, it's never too soon to understand what your options are. And in a lot of cases, people aren't ready yet and don't know how to prepare. So I can talk to people today and help them in two years, and it's great to go through that process with them. I also anyone who purchased a home in the last couple of years who is sitting on an interest rate above five percent, Although rates are not low enough now we all believe although none of us can actually procure this because we could be on islands and join the Sun if we could.

49:52 But we all do believe that interest rates will begin to come down at some point this year. Yeah, I'm just kidding. People in our industry's made mistakes of saying what date, So we're not going to do that, but I'll be sure to let you know when it is when it actually happens. But anyone who purchased a home at rates higher than four or five, particularly six percent, and want to be prepared to refinance when rates come down, never too soon to get prepared for that as well. The best way to reach me is at Amy at amyslotnk dot com or on mysell at six one seven five one three five six eight. Fantastic. Well, this has been fun for me. It's been really good to have you on the show.

50:37 Thank you for taking the time to be here. Well, thank you for having me Kevin. Of course, I'll see you soon, and thanks everybody for watching and listening. This is a show about business and business challenges. If you've got concerns about the growth of your company, feel free to reach out to me on Facebook that's on or LinkedIn excuse me at winning Business Radio or drop me a note. One of my many email addresses is Kevin at Winning Business Radio dot com. Our company is Winning Incorporated Sandler Training. We develop sales teams into high achievers and sales leaders into true coaches and mentors. Listen. We're not right for everybody, but maybe we should have a conversation. Thank you to our producer and engineer one, Thank you one for another job well done. Be sure to be here next week Monday, March eighteenth. My guests. Two guests will be Lisa Leveck of Focal Point Coaching and Belle Walker of Bellevue Consulting, co authors of the book Generation Innovation, Business Family, and the Journey to Success. Until then, this is Kevin Hallanan. Thanks for being here. You've been listening to Winning Business Radio with your host, Kevin Helena. If you missed any part of this episode.

51:40 The podcast is available on Talk for Podcasting and iHeartRadio. For more information and questions, go to Winning Business Radio dot com or check us out on social media. Tune in again next week and every Monday at four pm Eastern Time to listen live to Winning Business Radio on W four c Y Radio W four c Y dot com Until then, let's succeed where others have failed and win in business with Kevin Haleanan and winning Business Radio