The Great Recession emerges
She would later land at Washington Mutual bank. “At $10.25 an hour, I thought I had made it,” she said with a chuckle. By 2006, she would give birth to the first of two daughters, prompting a job transfer to a small community bank, she recalled. Things were going pretty well, she said. And then, the Great Recession hit to sweep it all away.
The couple lost their fledgling construction business and she got laid off from work. Her husband found employment as a manager for pest control services firm Terminix, for which the family transferred to Sarasota, Fla. As their family grew, the couple began to think about buying a home – a seemingly insurmountable move at the time. “Even though I worked in banking, I didn’t really know very much about my credit score and things like that because I didn’t grow up being taught that,” she recalled. “The mortgage company said we could buy a $189,000 house, but we needed a $30,000 [down payment]. I was 26 years old. I didn’t have $30,000.”
A friend referred her to a broker to secure more favorable terms. But before a purchase could occur, the family returned to Pensacola, Fla. “I was in college full time, I had two kids, and felt like we could never get ahead,” she said. She asked someone at the mortgage firm if she could help out with processing loans to earn extra money. Instead, her contact suggested a job as a loan originator, a job she took in Orlando – the family’s final stop.
“My husband had to stay [in Pensacola] for a little bit. I moved back to Orlando where’s he’s from and moved in with my mother-in-law so she could help me with the kids while I was working. I just dove in and worked 18 hours a day the first year. Florida was saturated with brokers because it’s so easy to get licensed. I had to figure out how to set myself apart.” With the power of epiphany, she found her niche. “I started getting known in Orlando as the loan saviour,” she said. “Everybody would call me, and I realized there was a niche in being a transaction coordinator.”
Lessons from the past continue to resonate
Today, she plies her trade at Appli Home Loans, where she’s spent the past eight years. “I remember what it felt like to be told I needed $30,000 and thinking I’d never be able to provide a home for my family,” she said. “To be able to empathize with people in that situation and helping them get into a house with their families is so important to me.”
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