Today we’d like to introduce you to Kevin Melody.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Kevin. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
Bought my first home in Long Beach in 1986 for $89,000 and sold it a year later for $130,000. That 40k and a review of what the mortgage and real estate brokers made on both the purchase and sale of my first home got me interested in possibly getting licensed. But I was just 28 years old at the time and still working on becoming a rock star (wasn’t everyone in LA doing that in the 80’s?). So I didn’t act on that thought immediately. But by 1989 I was starting to realize that fame and fortune in the music industry was probably not just around the corner, and I needed a day job. So I signed up for a licensing course with Lumbleau school of Real Estate. Three month later I had my Real Estate Salesperson License and a couple months later a Mortgage Broker License and set off to conquer the California Real Estate market, then the world!
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Having sold my first home for a 45% profit, I knew that real estate was going to be a piece of cake. Quick money that I could use to accomplish my real goal, which was to buy better instruments and recording gear and launch my music career into stardom. (Oh, how easy it is to know EVERYTHING when you know nothing!) What I didn’t know was that, while I was busy writing songs the economy was reeling for the biggest crash since the Great Depression, which took place (conveniently) just a couple months after I had sold my home in 1987. When I hit the streets pumped with enthusiasm and completely devoid of any real-world knowledge or experience, I ran head first into the real estate chasm that was 1990.
That first year was brutal. I had no idea what I was doing, how to generate business, what to do with it if I ever found it, or how I was going to survive. Prices had plummeted, there were for-sale signs on every other home and nothing – I mean NOTHING was selling. It was a wasteland out there. After basically starving and living on credit cards for 9 months, I finally landed a job as a loan officer at Coast Federal Bank, which was a local savings and loan that had managed to survive the crisis by obtaining a bank charter and offering ridiculously easy to qualify for adjustable rate loans. It was there in the loneliness of the cubicle farm in Chatsworth, where I sat 12 hours a day answering ad calls, that I finally managed to hook my first real client: a refinance from a bank customer who had a 14% rate. He was ecstatic when I got him approved at 9.9% and when I got my first commission, which was more than I’d ever earned in a single month in my life, I knew I’d found my calling.
Please tell us about HB Community Mortgage & Realty.
We’ve come a long way since 1990 and done loans for every possible type of client and I learned something early on that kept me going over the years: everyone has a story – a compelling reason for wanting or needing this particular loan at this particular moment and all of them need help in one way or another. One of my first loans was a couple from Downey who just wanted to lower their rate. After interviewing them I figured I had an easy, slam-dunk deal on my hands. They appeared to be the perfect borrowers: two incomes, long job histories, no debts and lots of equity in their property. In fact, they had been savvy enough to acquire a large lot in a great neighborhood and build their dream home on it all using their own cash. Later they had divided the property into 2 lots and obtained a loan to build a second home on the lot next door, which housed their daughter and son-in-law. It seemed like the perfect deal, until I got the credit report.
Their credit history was nothing at all like what they told me in the interview. There were pages and pages of credit cards, all charged up to their limits, most with late payments and a few in collections. I was shocked that this mild-mannered couple – a school teacher and an engineer who took in foster children – could even be the same people represented on this credit report. Of course, the loan was denied, but when I brought them the bad news they were just as shocked as I was and adamantly denied even having credit cards. I believed them and decided to try to help. I called every account and obtained the original credit applications and brought them to the borrowers. This was 1991 and no one had even heard of identity theft, but they confirmed that, even though all the personal information was correct, none of the signatures were theirs. But there was something even more troubling on their faces… they recognized the handwriting: it belonged to their daughter! Well, it took weeks of due diligence to document the fraud, but I was finally able to get an exception and get their loan approved on the condition that they draw cash out to pay off and close all the fraudulent accounts. They got their loan and got their lives back and I realized that I could do more than just originate loans, I could actually help people and make a difference in their lives. I’ve helped so many people over the years with so many different problems, issues, challenges and goals, and it never gets old watching their reactions when I say: loan approved! This is the main reason we’ve kept the company small, so we can continue to offer that old-school, face-to-face, your word is your bond service that my Mid-Western upbringing taught me to respect.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
I would have invented crypto-currency before Satoshi Nakamoto!
Contact Info:
- Address: 17011 Beach Bl., Suite 900
Huntington Beach, CA 92649 - Website: www.hbreverse.com
- Phone: 714.603.9791
- Email: [email protected]
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hbcommunitymortgage/
- Twitter: @hbreverse
- Other: www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-melody-hbreverse
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