Becca Green fell in love with the mortgage industry at the closing table. She worked at her parent’s mortgage company in Utah during the summer. She started in high school in the filing room, moved up to receptionist for a couple summers and eventually worked every type of operations job — some that she liked and some that she didn’t.
But she never thought the mortgage business would become a career until she began closing loans and witnessing firsthand families that were realizing their dreams. “At that time, we signed our docs with the customer,” Green said. “They came to our office … and I would sign them for their new home. Like, what’s more fulfilling? That final step of, ‘Oh, my gosh, this is so exciting. Here you go. You’re gonna get your keys.’”
Her calling in the mortgage industry came as an originator, a job that she first started 23 years ago. In 2020, Green — who is a now branch manager for Guild Mortgage Co. in Henderson, Nevada — closed 1,244 loans for $306.9 million in volume. She placed in the top 100 in multiple categories of Scotsman Guide’s rankings, including No. 7 for Top FHA Volume and No. 20 for Top Women Originators.
She moved from Utah to Las Vegas in 2004, when she was still working for the family mortgage company, to set up four new branches. Her family eventually sold the business before the housing crash, which hit Las Vegas particularly hard. After the crash, Green went to three different mortgage companies before she landed at Guild Mortgage in 2010. She prefers not to move around with jobs.
“For loan officers, we’re the driver; the company we’re with is our vehicle,” Green said. “We have to maintain them. We have to take care of it. You know, you can’t let the tire blow out. We need to make sure it can keep going. Generally, I find when people are struggling, changing companies is probably not the actual solution.”
She aims to have a personal or mortgage-related conversation with 100 referral partners each week — including real estate agents, financial advisers, insurance agents and more. She’s OK if many of these partners tell her no. She has reached out to one homebuilder for six years despite the fact he has never referred business to her. In fact, he asked her to stop calling, but she got him to agree to a call once every two months.
Green enjoys coaching other mortgage professionals. She has found that it has made her better at her own job. People learn in two ways, she said. “You have the ‘Oh yeah,’ which is the reminder of things we’re supposed to do, but we’ve already heard it,” Green said. “‘Oh yeahs’ are super powerful because they’re ‘oh yeahs’ for a reason, but a lot of times we forget them. And then we have the ‘ahas,’ which are things where we go, ‘Whoa, like that’s a game changer.’”
The mortgage business is hard work. But it’s a rewarding profession when you see someone purchase their first home or move into their dream home, Green said.
“I get really, really nerdy and passionate about housing truly being the American dream.” Green said. “I go all in for that. I always have, because the job itself is a lot of paperwork. It’s budgeting and it’s doing all these things.
“Your end result is the piece that’s so fulfilling. And so, that’s the part that I actually ended up falling in love with.” ●
