Matt Oliver joined Lund Mortgage in 2007 and married Lisa Lund in 2008. Albeit ironic that the global financial crisis was occurring mid-hire and mid-nuptials, the company — and the couple — stand solid to this day.
It was in 2005 during Arizona’s Phoenix Open (now the Waste Management Open) that Oliver and Lund first met.
“It was 19 years ago on a Saturday. We just had it here this past weekend,” she says. “I was there with a wholesale lender and he was there with his friends.”
Oliver was working for Chase Bank at the time, taking loan applications retail. Lund had been with her dad Stan Lund’s company about as long as she can remember, or at least since she asked for a 10-key calculator around her eighth birthday.
“He asked me what I did and I told him I was a mortgage broker,” she recalls of the first conversation she ever had with the man who would become her husband, the father of their children, and today, senior loan consultant at Lund Mortgage, which she now brokers and owns.
Oliver jokingly asked Lund that fateful day why anybody would go to a broker (instead of a bank) for a loan. “So I clearly explained it to him, and in 2007, I stole him over to the wholesale side.”
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The mortgage business went into crisis mode about a year later and for the first time in his career, Oliver witnessed a mass meltdown of loan officers across the industry.
“I just kept saying to myself at that point, I don’t ever want to be in that position,” he recalls.
So when the market was hot from 2019 to 2021 Oliver didn’t roll in the riches. He buckled down with eyes on the horizon in preparation for the market downturn, which inevitably came.
“It was like shooting fish in a barrel to do loans in 2020 and 2021, but it wasn’t going to last forever. We’ve always kind of taken it as a good omen to remember the clients we’ve dealt with and come back to work with them. I think that’s why this past year was a little bit better because we did have a lot of returning clients come back to us.”
Watch it on The Interest: Love, Loans, and Longevity
Oliver had more refinance volume and refi transactions than any other one of NMP’s Leading LOs of 2024, featured in the magazine’s April issue. His total refi volume for 2023, as printed, was $31,236,943 for 184 units. He also had $39,630,242 in purchase volume among 102 units, bringing his total loan volume for the year to $70,867,185, or 286 units.
He refers to Lund, his wife, as “a jack of all trades in this industry” and “a genius underwriter.”
The late Stan Lund, who passed away in 2014, started working in mortgage around 1981, for a home thrift and loan bank. When his daughter started her own business in 2009, he served as a key consultant right up until his passing.
“I feel that I was born into this business,” Lund says. “Ever since I was little, my dad would do ‘take your daughter to work day’ and I fell in love with the business from then on.”
She always liked math and seeing how her dad and his staff helped people get into homes.
We want to be your lifetime mortgage consultant. We’re going to look out for you. If rates drop or if we feel that we could put your family in a better situation down the road, we’re always going to be here for you.
Lisa Lund, owner, Lund Mortgage
In high school Lund started working at the shop, stacking files and helping with audits. She worked her way up from receptionist, to junior processor, processor, manager, and loan officer before taking over the business.
But Lund credits her father with ingraining the company ethos in all he touched.
“My dad left a great legacy and so many things to learn from,” she says. “In fact, when I was at the golf tournament this weekend, I ran into a client who remembered how my father came to his living room and sat down with him for his very first refinance and explained everything.”
That approach is one that she and her team hold paramount to this day.
“My dad taught me the old school mentality of what it means to work with clients and not just treat them as a number and to care about them,” Lund explains. “We brought the technology and the willingness to learn the technology part of it, but he brought so many good things that we carry on to this day about putting the client first and really understanding their needs. He really taught us to sit down, analyze everything and look at everyone’s individual situation separately. To say, we’re not here just to close this transaction for you. We want to be your lifetime mortgage consultant. We’re going to look out for you. If rates drop or if we feel that we could put your family in a better situation down the road, we’re always going to be here for you.”
This philosophy translates into lots of refinance transactions at the company, and in Oliver’s portfolio.
“The database is probably the most valuable tool that any loan officer could have in this profession,” he says. “If you’re not keeping track of your past clients and you’re not touching base with them and you’re not sending birthday cards or anything else, it’s worthless in my opinion. It’s worthless to not be doing that.”
While some mortgage companies play strictly for one team or the other, Lund prides itself on being both a purchase and a refi shop.
“I think it’s crazy to be fully committed to just one channel. We’ve definitely been more refinance dominant than purchase dominant, but we never took the purchase sector out of our business model,” Oliver says. “I think being proficient in both purchases and refinances, you should be able to retain those clients if you’re always doing what’s best for them. In today’s world, it seems like a lot of loan officers want to create these efficiencies with technology and be able to just talk to the client for three to five minutes and have their processor handle everything from then on out. To me, that’s bad business.Those people aren’t going to remember who you are in the transaction. There’s no reason for them to come back to you.”
But in cases where a refi won’t do a client any good, Oliver will be the first to let them know.
“We pride ourselves on giving sound advice,” he says. “At the end of the day, it just comes back to if you’re doing what’s best for the client at all times, and if they can feel that, if they can understand that that’s what you’re doing for them, they’re always going to trust your advice in the future.”
Preserving the family legacy is important to Lund, whose oldest son is now working right alongside her.
Matt and Lisa with their family. Their oldest son is now working alongside them, making Lund Mortgage a true family affair.
“Our main goal is making sure our clients are satisfied,” she says. “So they’re going to come back to us. They’re going to send their children to us. They’re going to send their family members, their coworkers to us.”
That drove her decision to get licensed in other states outside of Arizona.
“We really branded ourselves in Arizona where everyone knows who we are. We decided last year to start getting licensed in other states, which is something I never thought we would do. But we saw a need for it when our current clients were reaching out, saying ‘hey, I have a family member here. We’re moving here.’ ”
Tackling challenges like this one are what keep Lund and her team growing every day.
“Like anything else, there’s always challenges, but I absolutely love it,” she says. “One of the things I like to say is that everyone excels in their own space and what they’re good at. So learn to work together instead of against each other. Matt is wonderful on the phones. He’s great at talking to the clients, helping them understand, and I am more the operational, detailed brain of it, hence the underwriting. I like to solve the problems and he likes to bring them to me.”
As a married couple who work together, Oliver and Lund have accumulated some good stories over the years.
“I did write him up one time and everyone thought that was funny because he is my husband,” she recalls. “Just navigating through this industry together and all the times, having the common goals and understanding to stay in each other’s own lane, but really supporting each other, I think has been a big thing for us. Not trying to overstep on the other person, but understanding what their strengths are and really pushing that forward.”
Oliver is a big Kansas City Chiefs fan, so football is often a conversation starter or bridge out in the field.
“Just trying to create lasting impressions on these clients so that they always want to come back to me for transactions with them,” he says. “Plus a lot of times they’re telling their neighbors, friends, cousins, or brothers, ‘hey go use Matt Oliver at Lund Mortgage. I felt like he treated me right. He understands what our needs are and took the time to go through all that stuff.’ That stuff is so powerful and so important, and I feel like a lot of loan officers get away from that in today’s world. They just want to get the tech stack set up and try to turn these as fast as possible. You really need to nurture the clients if you want them to keep coming back. I think being a little bit more personable with the clients rather than just looking to pass them through your tech stack is crucial in this industry.”
He’s done loans for three generations of one family, and a half-a-dozen mortgages for the same client in less than a decade.
I like to solve the problems and he likes to bring them to me.
Lisa Lund, on how she and her husband each contribute to their company’s success.
One of Oliver’s closest referral partners is DeLex Realty agent Brad Sikes, who is also based in Arizona.
“He’s probably my closest business ally and partner and we’ve never actually met face to face,” Sikes says.
The first transaction he ever did with Oliver was around 11 years ago. Since then they’ve worked together on 100-plus deals, according to Sikes’ estimation.
“I value his honesty and integrity and knowledge of the business,” he says. “He’s not trying to get every last penny on every deal — he’s in it for the long haul. Matt cares about the process and the person — the business will take care of itself.”
Oliver even sends clients his way on the regular — a perk that real estate agents don’t always expect from an LO.
“I can’t tell you another agent who has ever gotten a referral from their lenders,” Sikes says.
But the exchange goes both ways. Sikes will give Oliver a call when he has a client who might not be able to afford the deal another lender has put forward.
“I can confidently tell people I’m going to save you $5,000 to $10,000 because I get Matt involved.”
He went on to call Oliver and Lund “absolutely the best people.”
Learning their story inspires other mortgage professionals, especially during the tough times.
“We really built our company during one of the worst times in mortgage,” Lund says. “And if we can make it through that and still be married, then any market is possible for anyone. There’s always a light no matter what you’re faced with. You can’t control the markets, but you can control how you deal with them. Remember why you love doing what you do, go back to the basics, understand your clients.”
This article was originally published in the NMP Magazine November 2024 issue.
