She cut her teeth at brokerage launched by her mom
Paige Hernandez didn’t have to venture far in becoming a loan originator. You might say it’s in her blood.
“I’ve kind of grown up in this industry,” she told Mortgage Professional America during a telephone interview. “My mom was a real estate agent when I was growing up, and then in 1993, she opened a mortgage company,” she said of her mother’s firm, Heritage MTG based in Chino, Calif. “When I was in high school, I had the choice of either going to summer school or work for her. I didn’t want to go to summer school.”
That is where she learned the ropes of the mortgage industry, she said. “I worked every position in the company and then we go to the point where she gave me probably the best advice ever: ‘If you really want to learn this business, go work for a lender so you can see the back end of how mortgage works,’ she recalled her mom saying.
Leaving the nest
Having cut her teeth in the business, she took a job with a now-defunct mortgage firm before helping a family friend set up her shop and taking a job there. “We had a family friend who was opening up a branch, and she needed somebody to help set it up. So I ended up spending a couple of years there and ended as a funder – I was funding loans for a while.”
By 2006, she began working as a wholesale account executive for wholesale lender Impac Mortgage Holdings Inc. “I think that was really where I learned the most about mortgage,” she said. “They were at the time the No. 2 what we used to call Alt-A lender in the nation behind Countrywide.” Alt-A is a classification of mortgages with risk profiles between prime and subprime.
“Because they securitized and held their own loans, they would portfolio them and I often had the opportunity to go into the loan committee,” said of her experience with Impac. “That’s where I got to learn how to balance risk.”
An unexpected turn of events emerges
And then, 2008 happened. The Great Recession had emerged. “They went into a holding pattern,” she said of Impac. “They closed both their wholesale and correspond divisions.”
The one saving grace? “I met my husband there,” she said with a chuckle. “That was a blessing.”
Yet she was left with the shock of suddenly being out of work – a tough spot for a preciously ambitious person to find herself in. “I was 28, and did really well,” she recalled. “I didn’t finish college, and to be able to go into something and make six figures and in a matter of a year to go from $200,000 to $50,000, $60,000 – I had to restructure. Even today, I can feel the remnant of that trauma.”
Exacerbating such feelings of loss was the corporate climate to which she had become accustomed. “I don’t know what it was about the culture at Impac, but that was one of the places – because I had been there for so long – where it was more like family.”
After that, she had stints at other wholesale outfits – Nation Direct Mortgage, Trust One Mortgage Corp., Stearns Lending LLC – before opting to take some time in expanding her family. “I started to have kids,” she said. “I came home and stayed home with my children.”
Coming full circle
Hernandez has come full circle since then, happily rejoining the family business at Heritage MTG. This go-around, she’s in even greater demand with a breadth of experience – a far cry from her early years when she contributed to the enterprise as needed. Her mother and stepfather launched a real estate arm in her absence, making her that much more needed back home handling mortgages. “I work with my mom, sister, stepdad, and stepbrother,” she said. “Our processor has been there 20 years, and I’ve known her since she was 18 years old. It’s a beautiful experience.”
It's the same but different, with rewards transcending mere remuneration. “I’m not a super-producer like other people,” she said sheepishly in noting her $6.6 million in volume posted through the end of May. “I’m just really happy to be even in the game. I make a great income but can take my kids to school. I can travel,” she added, referencing a recent family vacation to resort town Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, with her family.
And she’s found another family of sorts in the Association of Independent Mortgage Experts (AIME) of which she’s an enthusiastic member. “Working as an independent mortgage broker on the side is very lonely,” she said, notwithstanding her family’s support. “I love what I do, but it carries a lot of stress.”
This is where AIME comes in, with a reliable group of like-minded colleagues and friends who understand what makes her tick. “Since joining AIME and showing up at the events and getting to know people, I have a strong group of allies I didn’t have before,” she said. “A lot of my friends have ‘regular’ jobs, and don’t understand why you’re always on the phone. Once you have people who get it, it’s beautiful.”
There’s even a chat group comprising all women brokers of which she’s a regular. “Women in mortgage – they know how hard it is,” she said. “That’s been probably the biggest thing for me – the camaraderie and support system.”
It’s all about an individual’s position in relation to society, one’s connection to humankind. Because at the end of the day – with apologies to John Donne – no mortgage loan originator is an island.
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