Teaching from experience
“My unique background being in retail for so long and having transparency,” the Mortgage Nerds co-founder said, citing a couple of attributes making him a good trainer for the incoming influx of brokers. “The beautiful thing about being a broker is you see it all. We pay 100% commission to our LOs, and we charge a per-file fee we earn through our process, compliance, all those things – that’s how we were able to restructure.”
In a previous interview last year, Cox described his own transition to wholesale as challenging. “It was daunting to take the leap,” he said. “I was very nervous. There wasn’t a class to sign up to be a broker, at the time anyway.” As he made the transition, he was initially overwhelmed by the vast difference in rates costs, flexibility and other areas between the worlds of retail and wholesale.
He credits industry veterans Evan Wade and Anthony Casa with helping guide him along as he migrated to wholesale, offering him help on compliance and state regulations as well as having introduced him to key individuals to help grow his business.
It’s all about transparency
The level of transparency found in the wholesale channel doubles as something of a recruitment aid while the company builds on its loan originating ranks. “They know exactly what the company is making,” he said. “When you’re in retail, you have no idea what the company makes. They could be making – and this is not an exaggeration – seven, eight, nine points on the deal and you’re making one point. In the broker world, you know what the owner is making, you know what you make. It’s very transparent.”
The influx comes at a time of greater overall migration from retail to wholesale. According to the Nationwide Multistate Licensing System (NMLS) 6,353 loan officers who left retail in 2021 joined the independent mortgage broker community. In the first nine months of last year, according to NMLS, more than 7,000 loan officers converted from retail to wholesale lending.
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