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Gateway’s been through tough markets before
Despite market downturns, Gateway is poised to compete, he added: “Gateway’s been in the mortgage business for 23-plus years and been through different cycles – been through the mortgage meltdown, been through other rate ebbs and flows, ups and downs. This is very unique; we are dealing with a transition from two of the best years ever probably in my lifetime – in most of our lifetimes – to all of a sudden a massive decline in business due to rates and housing inventory – all the things we all know.”
And yet, the market is hardly at a full standstill: “With that being said, there’s still business being done,” Plaisance said. “A company like Gateway, we fancy ourselves to be nimble enough to still look for opportunity whether it’s in Tennessee, Missouri, Arkansas – it can be in Timbuktu. We’re not married to ‘we wanna be here, here or here.’ To be frank, we’re a business; we will go where we have opportunity to run a good mortgage business. Obviously, right now you need to be a little extra careful in your due diligence as to what that means.”
The key is in securing trusted, tested people
What it means to Gateway is securing trusted people to mine the new territories: “And that may mean you connect with people you’ve worked with before – people you know, people you’ve vetted – obviously with good track records, good sources of where they get their business from, strong referral partners whether it’s builders or realtors, whatever it might be.”
Such vetted individuals were found in each of the states to which Gateway has expanded, he said. “We had various degrees of known individuals that were part of those add-ons for us, so that certainly fits some of those criteria. You do have a fair number of people looking to move around right now, maybe kicking tires, but you also have people who aren’t going to move around as well.”
The selected folks to work those markets is something of a sign of the times in terms of broker migration in a mercurial market, as Plaisance described it: “It’s not uncommon in our business to see people change companies, to come back to companies,” he said. “In one of our cases, it was a rehire out in Tennessee. He worked for us, went to another company for a year, and came back. We’ve had our share of that as well, just like other companies. If you were to line up resumes of 50 mortgage loan originators, there’s a good chance – if they’ve worked in the independent mortgage space – maybe they’ve hopped around a little bit. It wouldn’t be uncommon to see them work for the same company a couple of different times.”
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