In a better market, they”™d be competitors.
That was the general sentiment of Arthur DiMella, branch sales manager of Continental Home Loans in Purchase and once rival, turned colleague, Ralph Berardi Jr.
After enduring and surviving the catastrophic mortgage meltdown, DiMella and Berardi share a certain gratefulness to be where they are now.
“It”™s the famous, ”˜What comes first, the chicken or the egg?” DiMella asked. “Did the recession cause the mortgage meltdown or did the mortgage meltdown cause the recession? I think it”™s probably contributory on both sides, but our markets started to disintegrate and come off the hinges around 2007. In late 2009, we had this opportunity (to join Continental) and it made a lot of sense for us. This company, they figured it out. They had been doing it all along ”“ doing business the right way, which allowed them to survive.”
Survival was something DiMella”™s eight-year employer Countrywide Home Loans knew not about. He joined Continental four months ago.
Berardi and his father, Ralph Berardi Sr., joined Long Island-based Continental this winter after a combined 45 years of keeping mortgage lending all in the family.
“Everyone knows what the last two or three years have been like,” Berardi said. “It has caused the mortgage broker industry to shrink significantly, so my father and I surrendered our brokers”™ licenses and merged with Continental. It”™s a mortgage banking company and that makes all the difference in the world right now. What I have not been able to do for the past two years, I can do everything now plus more.”
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One of those plusses is more practice with items such as Federal Housing Administration (FHA) loans and State of New York Mortgage Agency (SONYMA) loans, which DiMella said “have been here all along, but were not something we concentrated on.”
The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) 203k construction loan has also allowed clients “to acquire a home and finance the improvements to it,” DiMella said.
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Berardi said one client is buying a $183,000 foreclosure property in Mahopac and through a HUD construction loan is putting about $50,000 into it and “at the end of the day, will have a house that”™s worth over $300,000.”
Brokering FHAs and SONYMAs was a baptism by fire in “re-educating ourselves on what”™s available out there,” DiMella said.
The company mandates loan officers be trained on such specific products.
Berardi called that rigid training a model emulating the “re-cleansing of the industry.”
“At Countrywide, we didn”™t do a lot of FHA loans,” DiMella said. “We did a lot more of those creative or elaborate loans. Continental really maintained their focus on their core business and a lot of people are joining that now. I would say about 60 percent of our loans right now are FHA loans.”
Despite the apparent industry awakening, a bleak job market still weighs on Berardi”™s mind.
“Overall our economy is not out of the woods yet regardless of the numbers coming out last week that unemployment for the first time dropped,” he said. “I think the unemployment numbers are much higher than they are and on a local level, I think there are a lot more of what we would call ”˜middle class”™ struggling significantly, so I think foreclosures are still going to increase through the year.”
And of the axiom that no credit is available, Berardi does not agree.
“I think those that say there”™s no money available are those that are affected and like any other bad disease, it spreads,” he said. “I think there is a lot of money available. I think there are less people that might qualify for it ”¦ the lenders are opening up credit a little more and many of those people who didn”™t fit into programs, probably 25 percent of them now are able to fit into new programs. And we”™re doing it.”
