What Vacation?

For folks like Dolly Parton on the job from 9 to 5, that “cup of ambition” in the morning can do the trick. But busting their butts around the clock, MLOs need a whole lot more than that. 

A nap by the pool? That would be nice. A cruise around the Caribbean? Dream on. Cheering on Billy for his entire soccer game without ducking behind the bleachers for a work call? Not a chance. The mortgage business can be gratifying and fruitful, but it isn’t for the lackadaisical.

“People are looking at homes on their phone and getting excited at midnight on a Friday night and at 6 a.m. on Christmas morning – they just are. Then they have questions and they reach out,” says Josh Mettle, division president and director of physician lending at Utah’s NEO Home Loans.

He’s been in the business for 22 years and been involved in more Saturday and Sunday contract writings than he can count. 

If it was a competition, nobody would come out a winner. 

Shut it down 

“I say this laughing but I’m not actually all that proud of it,” NJ Lenders Corp. Regional VP Bill Mervin says, gearing up to recount an instance of personal time taking a backseat to lending. “My idea of taking a vacation for at least a decade, if not more of my career,” he says, “was taking my family somewhere nice and then spending the whole time in the hotel room. Then feeling good I was able to take my family somewhere nice to provide for them.”

In a survey of mortgage professionals conducted by NMP online, 43% of all respondents reported spending less than three hours per day engaging in family or personal time. That translates roughly to seven-eighths of their life spent sleeping or working. 

“Mortgage advisors need to have boundaries,” Mettle says. “It’s 6 o'clock and I'm shutting it down. I’ll be back on my phone at 5 a.m. Nobody’s going to die.”

A response first thing in the morning fresh and clear-headed, is better than the alternative. “If I’m burning the candle at both ends I'm not going to be of any use to anybody,” Mettle says.

Developing that mindset can take years of experience and young LOs may not be there yet.

“Fortunately, I’ve solved for that somewhat these last few years as my team has grown,” says Mervin, who recommends people set up shared phone and camera apps so if they can’t answer, someone else on their team can.

“I can’t tell you the amount of times that I would pull over on the side of the highway and my wife would hop in the driver’s seat and I would be taking applications on napkins, shushing the kids in the back,” Mervin explains. “This business can be very lucrative and rewarding when it goes well, but one of the tradeoffs, especially early on before you can cultivate a team, is that constant need for being available and on call at all times.”

Except to shower

More than half of all survey respondents said they unplug from work calls and emails during vacation “only for specific windows of time during the day and night.”

Just 16% completely free themselves from their work devices during scheduled time off, letting clients know they won’t be reachable.

That leaves a third of respondents who said they remain available to work clients and partners while on vacation “except to shower, sleep and use the bathroom…but even then I still might answer.” 

Survey takers also offered a glimpse into how far they’ve gone “on the fly” to secure or retain a professional deal outside of regular work hours. 

One-fifth of respondents have “picked up a call or two” while 39% “changed their plans” to accommodate. Another 39% percent of people “traveled a distance” for this purpose, and just one survey taker admitted to having “risked physical injury” for the sake of a work deal off-hours.

Dr. Jennifer Morley, an MLO with Pioneer Mortgage in Tampa, Fla,, recalls a nightmare instance when a seller’s title was horrible and the closing kept getting delayed.

“The ratelock was to expire Monday at midnight. We were to close Wednesday, then Thursday, then Friday. The buyer was flying out of town for business Monday. After hours and hours on the phone and email, we were able to get a remote close at the Detroit Airport Avis Rental office at 10 p.m. on Monday night,” she remembers. “The documents were loaded to the lender portal at 11 p.m., and so we made the midnight cut off. Barely.”

Clients will adapt

Jenny Nagelmueller, national marketing director of Legacy Mutual Mortgage in Texas, spent an entire night in the office early on in her career, preparing for a campaign launch. She fell asleep on the conference room table. 

“Everyone pulls all-nighters in college but I never pulled my first all-nighter until I was actually in the business,” she recalls. “I finished at 4:30 a.m. and had the presentation at 8 a.m.”

Now, Nagelmueller limits herself because otherwise, she’d be working nonstop. 

“I’m bad about taking a call or text when I’m on the treadmill,” she says. “People will ask me, ‘Why are you breathing so hard?’ I tell them and they say, ‘Don’t answer your phone on the treadmill! You’re going to kill yourself!’”

Mettle’s advice is to frame a schedule with customers upfront. “I'm going to be there for you as much as humanly possible, but I have two kids,” he says. “I will always respond to you when I can but if I don’t respond I just ask that you understand there are moments I have to prioritize my family.”

Dr. Morley was coached to keep a very structured work schedule and it’s served her well. “Your clients will adapt,” she says.

She works Monday to Thursday 8:30 a.m. to 6 or 7 p.m. and only takes inbound calls in the afternoons and early evenings. Mornings she makes calls and attends events and meetings. 

“Friday and Saturday are light-work-as-needed days and I never work Sundays,” Morley adds.

Will Fisher, executive vice president of Non-QM and Jumbo Mortgage at LoanStream in Irvine, Calif., recognizes that being a mortgage master is not easy – but gets easier.

“The lending business is cyclical; it’s always changing,” Fisher says. “Watching the younger crew come up under you and how they deal with it is very entertaining. If you’re at a company, working hard and you’re sincere - you’re going to do very well in mortgage.”