Mortgage Co. Prepares to Thrive as Industry Slows

Honesty and creative innovation have played a major role for David Black in developing a multimillion dollar company that has stood the test of time.

Having earned his degree in Mathematics from the University of Vermont, Black’s entrepreneurial spirit and experience as a mortgage underwriter led him to open First New England Mortgage in 1987. “I was twenty-seven years old,” he told MortgageDaily.com. “Then, the big joke was that if after a year I wasn’t successful, I’d still be employable.”

Black, now 44, has five First New England Mortgage offices around the country and projected sales revenue of $8 million for 2005.

The secret to his high sales volume? Black said the best thing to do is to be honest. “You need to differentiate yourself through honesty,” he advised. “Treat everybody right and learn the programs from inside and out.”

“If you don’t treat your clients honestly, you’re looking over your shoulder all the time,” he added. “Just do your best at all times; and if you stick with it and apply some of those thoughts, the phone will ring and you won’t have to depend so much on a lead source.”

It appears that Black also treats his employees right, another ingredient for success, he said. The employee turnover rate is relatively low compared to others in the industry. “We’ve bucked the trend,” he said. “We have people stay for ten to 15 years.”

Employee longevity might have something to do with how Black supplies his loan officers with the tools to become successful and creates opportunity for growth. All four branch offices were opened by staff that were promoted from within.

Black has also invested in automated customer relationship management solutions including LoanBright.com, a lead generation company in which Black is a partner, and Salesforce.com, which costs $1,200 per user annually.

Since Salesforce.com’s implementation in 2004, Black said his conversion rate from prospect to borrower has in some instances increased from three percent to 12 percent. “You can increase volume without even increasing the leads,” he explained. “If a loan officer bags one extra deal a year, the system pays for itself.”

“It gives us a competitive edge,” he continued. For example, he said of an online prospect, “Someone types in a request, it flows directly to a loan quoting engine, then they are sent an email introduction to First New England which includes an accurate interest rate quote based on their circumstances and the same information flows to a loan officer queue as a lead for the loan officer to call the applicant.”

Black said this year the company and its 80 plus employees expect to provide about $800 million in financing. Although that is down from its record of $1.4 billion in 2003, it’s comparable to last year’s volume.