According to a 2004 survey by Inside Mortgage Finance, Countrywide Financial Corporation is the top residential lender in the U.S. A member of the S&P 500 and Fortune 500, Countrywide, through its subsidiaries, provides mortgage banking and diversified financial services in domestic and international markets. The corporation’s core business is mortgage banking. The principal subsidiary, Countrywide Home Loans, Inc., originates, purchases, securitizes, sells and services residential loans. The California-based company has a workforce of more than 50,000.
How long have you been with your company?
I joined Countrywide in June 2004.
How long have you been in the industry?
My mortgage banking career began in 1984, so we’re looking at 21 years in the industry.
How long has your company been in the area?
Countrywide has had a retail branch presence in Florida since the mid-1970s. In those early years, there were only a handful of retail branches. Today, there are about 100 branches in Florida and four in the Jacksonville area.
How long has your company been in the business?
Countrywide was founded in 1969 by two entrepreneurs, Angelo Mozilo and David Loeb, who envisioned growing their small mortgage banking company into a “country wide” company by focusing on lowering barriers and helping people realize the dream of home ownership.
How many lending agents do you have?
The retail channel of Countrywide Home Loans has a sales force of more than 13,000, with 795 branch offices throughout the nation.
How many lending agents does your company have in Jacksonville?
There are 30 members of our sales force in Jacksonville. We also have about 20 operations team members who work in the area.
Are there enough qualified lending agents to go around?
Yes. The Jacksonville area is very fertile ground for recruiting experienced sales professionals.
What qualifies an agent?
Countrywide seeks sales professionals with high productivity standards and a home purchase market mentality. We also look those who have both mortgage banking experience and have existing relationships with real estate agents, home builders and others in the residential real estate industry.
What is the best way for a Realtor to get to you?
Ideally, one of Countrywide’s professionals has already approached a real estate agent, asking for the agent’s business and sharing Countrywide’s value proposition. Our sales force is very determined when it comes to building strong relationships with real estate agents and home builders. We want to be the first lender that an agent or builder thinks of for financing needs. If one of our salespeople has not visited, you can contact one of the Jacksonville offices, and there’s a wealth of information on Countrywide’s Web site, www.countrywide.com, under “Business Partners” in special sections called “Realtor Advantage” and “Builders Advantage.”
What’s the best place for networking with Realtors?
Staying very active and participating in meetings and events of the area’s trade association for real estate agents is a great way to form relationships and keeping those relationship productive. Other events and meetings of professional organizations that have a housing related focus are also excellent venues for relationship building.
What can lenders do for Realtors?
Lenders can play a very valuable role to real estate agents. At the transaction level, a responsive lender that offers a wide array of loan products can approve financing quickly for qualified home buyers and also process and close a loan quickly. For a real estate agent, speed and reliability of financing gives confidence that the home sale is unlikely to fall through.
Lenders can also serve as a valuable resource for news, information and tools that can support a real estate agent’s business, including educational tools on how to capture more listings, market homes and attract and retain clients.
What makes your company outstanding?
The list is really long. Countrywide was listed by Fortune Magazine March 7, 2005 as one of America’s Most Admired Companies and was ranked as America’s number one home loan lender for 2004 by Inside Mortgage Finance on Jan. 28, 2005. Countrywide’s current motto for business partners says it best - “Countrywide CanSM.” This tagline is based on the idea that unlike almost all of the competition, Countrywide’s focus is on mortgage lending. Our value proposition for real estate professionals and builders includes the following:
• One of the broadest menus of loan products and programs in the industry, giving Countrywide the ability to meet the financing needs of virtually any qualified home buyer.
• Operational excellence and efficiencies honed through more that 35 years of mortgage industry experience and leadership.
• Decentralized operations enabling a choice of local, regional or centralized home loan processing from application to funding.
Countrywide is also an outstanding place to work, a company where a person has opportunities and can run as fast and as hard as they desire. It offers a workplace where one is surrounded by smart, hard working people, all of whom are guided by high ethical standards of conduct and who strive to do the right thing.
What’s the biggest challenge that comes with being a lender?
The biggest challenge is also the biggest reward. Helping an individual or a family to make what is most likely the largest financial transaction in their lives puts a lender in the position with a great deal of responsibility. A responsible lender earns the trust of customers and provides information so that customers can make informed decisions about home financing. Lenders that embrace responsibility have the reward not just of earning the customer’s business, but also the personal satisfaction of helping someone realize their dream of home ownership.
What challenges do apartment conversions bring?
In many locations, the cost of buying an apartment complex and converting it to condos is far lower than trying to find land to purchase and then build a new development. Yet, developers face a lot of paperwork and project approval issues. The presale requirement can also be a challenge for developers. Traditionally, developers needed to have presold a certain number of condos in a complex, making it difficult to find buyers with financing for the first units. This in turn creates standing inventory that the developer or builder carries. Countrywide can help developers to receive project approval from Fannie Mae and other agencies. That means condo buyers have the fullest possible range of conforming loan products to choose from, including zero-down payment loans and financing programs for buyers who use the condos as a second home or investment property. The company also has a program that waives presale requirements on qualified condominium projects. This can expedite the loan process for early buyers, resulting in quicker approvals, lower carrying costs and faster moving inventory for builders and developers.
What’s the trend: bigger or smaller mortgages?
For many decades, the tradition was to save up until amassing enough cash for 20 percent for a down payment for a home, then get a 30-year fixed rate mortgage for the remaining 80 percent of the price of the home. Over the last decade or so, home buyers became more sophisticated about personal finances and the mortgage industry increased its sophistication in introducing new types of loan products, many of which are low-down or zero-down payment loans. Consumers today have a lot more choices. Many are choosing mortgages that have small down payments, thus larger loan amounts.
Has Internet lending had much affect on the industry?
The Internet has evolved beyond the “pure play” Internet lenders that entered the business in the late 1990s. Today, the Internet is a powerful customer service and customer communication channel. It is also a direct response media channel that encourages customer contact via phone or e-mail.
— from Rick Brown,
vice president and
area sales manager
consumer markets division Countrywide Home Loans.