Opportunity For All

This realization led him to enroll in Keystone, which just graduated its inaugural class — Nteyafa included — Jan. 11, 2024 at George Washington High School in Denver, Colorado.

Prime Mortgage President Janine Kempfer founded the school with the goal of training people from underserved communities to be successful mortgage brokers who go on to help others who look like them secure home loans, thus decreasing the longstanding homeownership gap in black and brown communities.

Curriculum

“I was fortunate enough to have someone that helped me and I felt like it was my duty to pay that forward and help other people,” Kempfer says.

During her 30-year career in the industry, she found herself disconcerted with the fact that ‘the gap’ is widely recognized but little action taken has really moved the needle.

“The homeownership gap has basically been right around 30 percent all the way back since the Fair Housing Act was passed in 1968. It’s just really been a frustration of mine personally, to watch that go on and not be able to come up with something that really works. So I decided that I was going to do something myself.”

Academy instructor Ken Jones was impressed by a vision Kempfer imparted at a brokers conference in Las Vegas several years prior. Although they didn’t have a chance to meet then, an encounter years later was sprinkled with fate.

Jones met Kempfer’s niece at his 50th birthday party and the two got to talking. Turns out her aunt was in the process of launching a mortgage school that sounded like just his cup of tea. Upon discovering she was the same individual who inspired him at the conference years before, he knew their paths had crossed for a reason.

“To me, it felt full circle,” Jones said. “Like it was just a perfect match, because of what my passions are and how I want to empower my community, being able to create a larger form of representation within the industry, which is vastly underserved.”

Keystone’s curriculum goes far beyond the mortgage industry’s typical 20-hour pre-licensing education. From the history of banking in communities with lower socioeconomic status and redlining, to the lessons every loan officer usually learns the hard way.

“A lot of people just don’t grow up with homeownership instilled in them,” Kempfer says. “I wouldn’t say it’s foreign, but it’s not the norm in some communities. So my idea was, what if we could educate people about the mortgage industry and help them get licensed with the angle of going back into the community and doing something about this gap? I believe by starting there and getting everybody in the right place from a heart perspective, then we could start to learn from a cultural aspect, why homeownership is important and why learning this industry and how to be loan originators can be such a pivotal thing for communities. Not only from a purely homeownership standpoint, but also from a wealth building standpoint and changing the trajectory of a family’s future.”

Watch it on The Interest: Minority Mortgage Moguls In The Making

It’s her goal to arm students with the tools they need to stand apart from other newly-licensed LOs. That meant the inaugural class learned about everything from what goes into a loan application and a day in the life of an LO, to industry technology and marketing. Perhaps most crucial — how to hit the ground running from day one and become your own boss.

“I have to say I’m really proud of what we did,” Kempfer says. “I think it went really well for our first cohort and we’ve got some things that we’re going to tweak for the second time around but overall the students were very excited, engaged and eager to get started.”

The Atlanta-based Jones, who has been in finance since 1998 and is currently senior account executive at Arc Home and President/CEO of BizExpress Capital, is proud of the class.

“When I think about what we accomplished, what those students accomplished in such a short period of time, it was groundbreaking,” Jones says. “Being able to take students with no real background in the mortgage industry at all, to not only get them to go through the 20-hour course, but be able to pass the NMLS the first time at a high ratio — above the national average — showed us we had a good formula.”

Jones says he was “fortunate” to reach higher-level management early on in his mortgage career, but is cognizant of the fact that this is not the case for many black Americans.

“I was probably one out of 50 in the grand scheme of things,” he says. “I teach the students coming in, even if you work for somebody else in this industry, especially because it’s commission-based, you are self-employed,” Jones says. “The goal is to eventually be able to grow into your own entity, your own business. Then creating opportunities for people that not only look like you, but have the same type of integrity, work ethic, and everything else. The people you want representing you should be a direct reflection of how you interact with society.”

The First Class

They had planned on the class being larger, but a rigorous schedule and strict attendance policy weeded out the committed from the not-so-serious candidates. Participants ranged in age from 20 to 75 years old and represented a variety of racial backgrounds.

While the original plan was to place graduates at brokerages in the area, Kempfer ended up onboarding all of them at Prime Mortgage Feb. 1.

“By hiring this first round of students myself,” Kempfer says, “it gives me the opportunity to see how the training worked in real life — if we accomplished what I envisioned us accomplishing. If there are gaps, we’ll be able to make those adjustments next time around.”

Metrics are being tracked as the new grads journey through their first few months as LOs.

“Not only how many families did we help, but how successful are the loan officers? How many stayed with it? How many did we lose?” Kempfer says. “My challenge is to teach them how to fight, teach them how to understand the guidelines so that they are equipped to ask the right questions and get the right results.”

Nteyafa’s shoes definitely hit the ground running post-graduation. By the end of January, he was already assisting five households with acquiring home loans.

The owner of a car dealership and a bed and breakfast founded the nonprofit 90 Day North American Resettlement Program in 2022. He called Keystone “an eye-opener” for his career. “My first priority in 2024 is helping immigrants secure homeownership,” Nteyafa says. “Lincoln said this is the land of opportunity.”

Patrons to his dealership are now learning that they should wait until they own a home to buy a car, because the car payment will work against their eligibility for a home loan.

“I will not sell a car to somebody until I tell them about owning a home,” Nteyafa says.

He’s also visiting ethnic neighborhoods and educating longtime renters about the values of homeownership and what they need to reach that goal.

Class Valedictorian Malcolm Quattlebaum happens to work as activities director at the school where the course took place, so he signed up while securing the space for the group to meet.

“As I was working with them last summer to make sure that we have a good room to accommodate everything they need I leaned in a little bit more like, ‘hold on, this is very interesting. Do you guys have room for one more?’ ” Quattlebaum recalls.

Before that day, he never imagined he would become an MLO, never mind graduate at the top of the class he spontaneously joined.

“It was definitely after the first day when I realized this isn’t just something small that you’re getting into. This is humongous,” he says. “It didn’t take me long to understand the magnitude of the situation. So then I had to change my approach and really give it my all, because in order for me to pass the test and even be successful in this industry, it will take my all.”

During his first 90 days on the job, Quattlebaum plans to soak up all the knowledge he can and start building a clientele base and referral network. All the while, igniting sparks of hope in minority communities.

“I always have to keep in mind that what I’m doing is bigger than just money, bigger than just trying to close a deal. I’m really changing people’s lives. I’m really just trying to take my time and be intentional and impactful with what I do. You can’t take this lightly.”

The Future

Funding came from Homepoint Foundation, which was acquired by Mr. Cooper Group shortly after the course began in Sept. 2023.

“Since that has transpired, we will need to raise funds to continue the program,” Kempfer says.

Lenders looking for opportunities to diversify their workforce and clientele while increasing their outreach to prospective borrowers in minority communities are her ideal partners.

“Demographic projections say that in the coming years, the minority will be the majority as far as the lending base is concerned. So this gives lenders an opportunity to diversify the way that they’re interacting with minority communities and minority borrowers,” she says.

She’s also working to connect with real estate agents and other lead sources. Keystone grads are being provided a small, three-month base pay as they get their feet wet — a stipend originally slated for the brokerages that would have potentially hired them.

“This is so that the graduates have a chance to ramp up their business and get things in their pipeline without having to worry about taking care of the basics,” Kempfer explains.

Jones is in constant contact with the new LOs and plans on staying involved with the school, his own experience as instructor having been so insightful.

“Just listening to the students express how they felt about me teaching them literally brought tears to my eyes at the ceremony, because I knew that I was doing what I should be doing,” he says. “I share a sense of purpose that goes beyond just me serving myself. I want to help serve my community. I want to empower people to be great. Collectively, if we’re all on that same path, that’s when you create some amazing things in this world.”

His hope is that someday every major U.S. city is home to a Keystone Mortgage Academy.

The next class will likely begin its studies around June 2024, according to Kempfer.

“Once we get our foothold here in Denver, we’ve got some other metropolitan areas in our sights that really need a program like this. So we are planning on expanding it nationally,” she says.

Quattlebaum uses adjectives like “beautiful” and “tremendous” to describe his Keystone experience. But he also has a new mission: spreading hope among prospective homebuyers in minority communities.

“I can’t speak for the other MLOs out there,” he says, “but I know there’s 11 MLOs that just graduated from Keystone Mortgage Academy who will take the time and will fight for you and will make sure that your dreams of being a homeowner can come true. We’re coming to help you guys.”