Full Transcript is Below:
– Welcome to another episode of Cafecito y Charlas I’m Ana Maria Sanin, with the wonderful team of business development, here at NFM Lending, as well as the brand ambassador to the Spanish market. And today, I have Mr. Jan Ozga with us, President of NFM Lending. It is a pleasure to have you with us.
– Aw, thank you so much Ana Maria, for having me. I appreciate it.
– Jan, can you please tell us, how is it that the NFM is impacting the Hispanic market, through home ownership?
– So, there’s a couple of things to understand about the Hispanic market. And, over time, NFM’s overall volume with the Hispanic market has increased. If you looked at NFM, maybe five years ago, the Hispanic market represented maybe 3% of NFM’s overall production. Maybe 3 to 5%. Today, it’s around 20%. So, what is happening in the Hispanic market is that it’s probably the largest, first-time-home-buyer population in the country, and that number is only gonna grow exponentially. I could easily see that NFM’s overall production in five, 10, maybe 15 years, would be north of 50%. So that’s how big I think the opportunity is for, not only NFM, but for the housing market in general, to serve this community. And, at first and foremost, you have to understand the culture of the Hispanic community. And so, it’s not so easy to just say you wanna serve the Hispanic community. You have to have Hispanic operations staff. You have to have Hispanic loan officers. You have to have Hispanic websites. You have to have Hispanic disclosures, and why is this, because you have to explain the total process of how the loan application works, what it is to get the right interest rate, what it is to get the right product, and it has to be communicated properly.
– Yeah.
– And so, what NFM has done in our strategy, is we have strategically gone after Spanish-speaking branches, Spanish-speaking loan officers, Spanish-speaking underwriters. We have changed social media, segments of our social media commitment to the mortgage space to purely Spanish. So, we’ve made a huge commitment to serve this community effectively. And keep in mind, when we’re talking the Hispanic community, it’s a different community in that you have to look at work visas. You have to look sometimes at non-occupying co-borrowers. You have to look at multiple borrowers in one property. You have to look at multiple jobs. A lot of times these people have been in the United States just for three or four years, they’ve had multiple jobs, they’re finding their way. And the first thing that we wanna do, get home-ownership. That’s how you get the piece of the American Dream is you get into home-ownership. And so, at NFM we’re committed to that. And we’re committed to serving the community through communication, through understanding the culture, and through getting the right support-staff, and the right employees that understand culturally, the Hispanic market.
– Yeah, wow. Well that’s very well said, and I wanna touch on two points that you mentioned. Number one, we’re looking, or we’re foreseeing that we’re pretty much gonna double our numbers, as far as percentage, right, on loans that we’re gonna be–
– Overall volume, that’s right.
– Yes, yes, that’s amazing. And then number two, you mentioned marketing, right? Being able to provide to the Hispanic. It’s not just having the Hispanic, the Latinos, loan originators, and operations and so forth, but also, being able to speak to them in their language, when it comes to disclosures, when it comes to being able to market to that specific target audience. So, having that in Spanish, that’s something that we do very well, and, I foresee us continued to translate. I mean, we already have Cafecita and Charlas, right? And that’s why I’m here. Well, and again, it’s not so much marketing per se, as you use the term marketing, more education, and how do we provide information so that a consumer, whether you’re Hispanic or not Hispanic, is totally informed. To us, that is the most important thing. To have an informed consumer that understands precisely what they’re getting.
– Yeah, wow. Well, Jan, thank you so much for sharing your insight, and for talking to our audience today, and letting them know a little-bit about more of NFM, and really where we’re heading within the Hispanic market. I really appreciate your time. This has been great. Thank you.
– Thank you, Ana Marie. We appreciate all your hard-work getting the message out about NFM Lending.
– Absolutely, it’s my pleasure to be here, and I really just continue to look forward to impact our Hispanics, not just on the east, but west, as well as the south, right.
– Not to mention, when you say that, our primary markets right now, and soon it will be every state will be a primary market, but our primary markets are Arizona, obviously Florida. Miami, we have a big percentage of our volume comes from Florida and South Miami. Northern Virginia. All this is gonna expand, Richmond, Virginia. So it’s all starting to expand, so, again, watch in time, this number’s gonna exponentially grow.
– Yeah, amazing. Thank you so much, Jan. All right, and to all of our viewers, thank you so much for tuning-in. I will see you next time, on another episode of Cafecito y Charlas. Take care.