The Rise Of Mortgage Influencers

Embrace The Cringe

In most cases, people don’t become originators to become social media influencers. The thought of talking excitedly to an audience of potentially thousands of people can feel uncomfortable. 

But, no one is a natural-born star, and as Nguyen says, it’s okay to be bad at it when first getting started. Just keep posting consistently!

“I didn’t have a good editor, so our clips weren’t amazing. Transitions were horrible. The lighting was bad, everything was horrible,” Nguyen said. “But I posted twice a day and I went live twice a week. It was crappy going live because I only had five people watching me, my mom, my dad, my brother, my business partner, and my business partner’s parents.” 

Watch it on The Interest: Mortgage Media Stardom

It took Nguyen a while to build up an audience, going from five viewers in June 2017 to 100 or 200 per video in February 2018. All it took was one video going viral – his V-O-E video, where he sings, “Gimme a V, I got your V, I got your V! Gimme an O, I got your O, I got your O!” with a cheerleader-type dance to teach viewers about verification of employment. 

It initially got 2,000 views, and after liquidating his house in March to pay off his debts, Nguyen used some of the remaining money to run the video as a YouTube ad in May. He was able to fund nine loans off the proceeds. The rest is history, he said, and he kept building his business from there. 

Phillips also often made herself cringe before she developed her showmanship. Although she doesn’t recommend posting a bad video for the sake of creating content, she does advise beginners to go easy on themselves in the beginning. 

“Your first 10 or 15 videos are going to be awkward and a little bit painful to go back and rewatch,” Phillips said. “But, the more you do, the easier it gets. And you just got to start doing it, and you just got to be consistent. The biggest thing is consistency.” 

As his last piece of advice, Nguyen says all newbie content creators should remain patient. Generally, leads don’t flood in overnight. “But when you do get a deal,” he said, “I’m sure it’s gonna be a whale of a deal.”  

Experienced originators have established a reputation with previous clients, so most of their marketing is word-of-mouth. Many originators with 5 years experience or less, however, are still building their reputations, and doing so through social media. That’s why 43% of newer originators find success with social media advertising compared to 26% of experienced originators with 20+ years in the industry. 

Yet, in recent years, more mortgage companies and originators have begun to embrace the rise of social selling, seeing it as a way to connect with younger homebuyers. NFM Lending launched a one-of-a-kind influencer division due to the success of originator Scott Betley (@thatmortgageguy), who has 872K followers on TikTok, and is now vice president of the influencer division.  

Some lenders or brokers may find they have a star in their midst and encourage their own staff to become an influencer, like what happened to Mandy Philips (@mortgagemandy) when she worked as an originator for Vista Real Estate, based in the Redding-Red Bluff Area. Since then, she has become branch manager for Omega Mortgage Group, expanding her reach nationally. Though Phillips initially didn’t have any experience or much comfortability in front of the camera, she continued posting consistently and eventually gained 123K followers on her main platform, TikTok.

But for any companies that don’t have that kind of talent on staff, they can partner with a separate company of influencers to make content, like Irvine-based What’s A Mortgage (WAM). That’s what brokerage West Capital Lending did in 2023, partnering with the 15 member team of LO influencers at WAM as an experimental way of generating leads. West Capital Lending CEO Daniel Iskander said he believes it’ll be a boon to growing leads since WAM’s previous partnership with loanDepot led to about $70 million in closed production in just one month. 

“My plan was to be a mortgage educator, to inform consumers on what a mortgage is. That’s how we came up with a name,” said WAM co-founder Minh Nguyen. “When I started making content and putting the consumer first without thinking about getting something back, is when it started working.”

Still, the industry has only just begun to skim the surface of social selling. 

Going Direct

Nguyen, Orange County-based originator and co-founder of WAM, said he started expanding his presence on social media to minimize his dependence on real estate agents and go direct to consumers. Or, in his case, going directly to his consumer’s “For You” page.

“I can get to the consumer quicker than waiting for the Realtor to do it,” Nguyen said. “We went to US Bank, loanDepot, and after that we went to sell leads to other mortgage companies for a season. And, of course, as the market shifted, we became a mortgage broker in August of last year.”

Nguyen estimates his team of loan officers averages $22 million a month in funded loans. At the company’s peak during 2020 and 2021, they were funding $50 million to $70 million loans per month for loanDepot.

Phillips was initially surprised she found success through TikTok, since she never considered herself a natural in front of the camera.

“Probably about half of my business now actually is just from social media,” Phillips said. “Because of my success with TikTok, I decided to get licensed in multiple states… in addition to California, now I have a license in Texas, Tennessee, Florida, and South Carolina, because I noticed that I was getting a good amount of leads from those states as well.”

People from these states would reach out to her through the comment section, direct messages, or through her email which is shown on her account page.

“I don’t ever try to sell them on anything. I just offer help and value, and I’ve been able to turn that into business consistently,” Phillips said.

Finding A Platform

WAM was not Nguyen’s first attempt at starting his own company, though. In 2016, he started Vision One Mortgage, a small direct lending company, but just one year later, he lost everything due to his staff being poached by other lenders, bringing their Realtor partners along with him. To make matters worse, one of his loan officers left him in debt from his bad loans. 

“I had to liquidate all my assets to pay back all the bad loans that my loan officer stuck me with, and we had to scratch and dent a bunch of loans,” Nguyen said. “Everything was sold off. I owed about $600,000 in just money to the collectors or warehouse lines and all that. I was losing everything.” 

Nguyen’s surmounting debt caused him to lose his mortgage company, his house, and even his marriage, in one fell swoop. 

“Everyone left me,” Nguyen said. “But as they were leaving me, that’s when I built my social [presence] in 2017.” 

In the aftermath of his downfall, Nguyen began leaning on social media to build up his advertising and catch as much business as quickly as possible. With the help of some social media advertising for his mortgage and credit repair business, he did. From March to November in 2018, Nguyen was able to pay off the $600,000 he owed through the leads he generated on social media.

“I saw it change my life and it made me go all in on it,” Nguyen said. 

Phillips, on the other hand, began her career as a Realtor before transitioning to be a mortgage originator. Her husband owned the real estate brokerage, Vista Home Loans, and had been wanting to add lending to their business for some time. 

“As realtors, we’re in the dark,” Phillips said. “We’d get these very inconsistent updates from the lender after trying to track them down for days. We would need to draft extensions [and] everybody would get frustrated. So I decided I will go ahead and get licensed.”

As for her influencer career, Phillips’s story is similar to Nguyen’s in which she got her start because she was tired of answering the same questions posed by consumers, and saw the need for more financial education.

Approaching Content

Phillips made a list of her borrowers’ frequently asked questions and short videos that provided in-depth responses. When her clients would reach out with these frequently asked questions, she’d include the video in her email response. 

“People have responded really well to it,” Phillips said. “They like it and it’s more digestible for them.” 

Phillips’s strategy of answering frequently asked questions is a great way to get started with making content. Taking on the role of financial educator is a generally successful approach, especially for originators targeting first-time homebuyers. 

When Nguyen worked as a loan officer for his previous employers, he realized many consumers don’t know what a mortgage is or how to qualify for one, hence the company name What’s A Mortgage.

But financial education is helpful to all homebuyers, especially when it comes to different loan options, Nguyen said. Move-up buyers may be newly self-employed and need a Non-QM loan, or considering down payment assistance, or want to be updated on the latest government programs and affordability products.  

Accordingly, the first thing mortgage influencers, Nguyen and Phillips, did was identify their target audience and what they want to learn. In the same way originators learn their market in order to decide which products to offer, social sellers need to make targeted, market-based choices on content. 

For underserved, low-income, or first-time borrowers, content explaining affordability programs and products are helpful, as well as news impacting home prices and mortgage rates. Basic educational content about the mortgage process or loan types also works, or explaining terms like FHA, VA, USDA, conventional, mortgage insurance, and down payment assistance.

However, Phillips warns content creators to not dwell too much into their niche. They need to cast a wide net to draw a substantial audience. An originator specializing in divorce lending may gear most of their content in that direction, but attracting a broader following requires a broader content offering. 

“I just do the basic loans myself,” Phillips said. “I think that that type of video content is going to bring in the clients and the leads that you’re looking for.”

Nguyen also warns originators to ensure they actually offer the products and programs they talk about. That way the content creator has a better chance of converting clicks to leads, because it’s all about building trust and accountability with the borrower.

“When you start mixing the content together, you’re sending the wrong signal to social media,” Nguyen said. “If I told you, ‘Hey, I love hamburgers, I love meat,’ [and] then you bring me a burger. But I’m like, ‘Why? Why did you bring me a burger? I like tofu.’ It’s just so confusing. So just tell me one thing and let’s stick to that one thing.” 

Click here to read more