Rate’s Allyson Kreycik is based in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, but at heart, she’ll always be a Heartland girl. Born and raised in the Great Plains, Kreycik grew up in an agricultural community outside Pierre, South Dakota, and got a business degree in Nebraska before life took her and her husband to the outskirts of Boston. Now, as a successful mortgage originator — she was 67th in Top Dollar Volume in 2022 and 75th in 2021 — she says that many of the virtues that form the foundation of her New England practice have their roots in America’s breadbasket.
“I grew up in a humble home and learned from a very young age a very hard work ethic,” Kreycik says. “Just those values of taking care of people and always doing the right thing for people, even regardless of whether or not I get paid on it or if it’s going to even be a loan.
“I advised a past client last week to move a closing date and temporarily take money out of an IRA for the short term to avoid needing a mortgage at all because that was the right thing for him. Being raised in the Midwest taught me to work honestly [and] have integrity — not working based on the transaction, but working based on the relationship. … I think when you wake up and your goal is to take care of people, help people and do the right thing for people, you see your business grow as a result.”
That attitude, she says, has helped her retain several business relationships that continue to pay dividends for 20 years ongoing. In fact, it’s that eagerness to take care of people that landed her in the mortgage industry back in the early 2000s.
“Mortgages weren’t something that they really talked about in college,” she laughs. “Like, no one ever said, ‘Hey, you should be a mortgage lender, this is a great career.’ I even took a real estate course and I remember the professor talking about how the appraisal industry was a great industry to get into, but no one talked about mortgage lending.
“So when we moved to Boston, I didn’t have a career yet, but I knew that I wanted to help people. I found a mortgage office and they had an opening for a sales assistant, so I just kind of fell into home financing, but it was really a perfect fit for me. It’s really rewarding because for most customers, [a home purchase] is the biggest purchase of their life, so they’re looking for someone to work with that they really can trust. I get to use my finance background, but also just get the reward of helping people every day.”
Kreycik said that the Greater Boston area, with its bevy of upscale neighborhoods and expensive homes, has been a fascinating hometown market over the past 24 months.
“Last year was really challenging,” she said. “It was tough for any correspondent lender — or for any lender, really — but for any correspondent lender, it was tough, especially when you work in a jumbo-focused market. The banks really took over market share with portfolios and portfolio lending. But this year has been significantly better because we [at Rate] created our own in-house jumbo product where we’re taking jumbo mortgages and then securitizing them on the secondary market. The program is extremely competitive and aggressive, so even though this year hasn’t been tremendously better as an industry, it has been tremendously better for me because I now am better equipped to compete.”
Even with a boost from the product side, Kreycik said that she’s had to stay nimble to evolve with the times.
“I’ve had to pivot some,” she says. “I’m actually more new-construction focused. But I’ve had to try to kind of break into markets that were more Fannie- and Freddie-based. Which I’ve done, but it’s hard to reinvent yourself — and to want to reinvent yourself — when you’ve been doing the business for so long. But it’s something that you have to always be open to do, to be and stay successful, especially when the market has the twists and turns that it has had lately.
“Part of being successful is being open-minded to change when you need to be,” she adds. “It may not always be comfortable or easy, but that’s part of the work.”
