From today’s Salt Lake Tribune article “A Utah link to terrorism?“, five brothers are suspected of sending money to Jordan to help fund terrorist activities in the Middle East.  Apparently money came from mortgage and car loan fraud in Utah, among other places.

I met with Envision Lending Group today and really liked everything about the situation. The CEO, Jerry Anderson, seems like a nice guy and the company seems like they have their stuff together. So, I’m going to be hanging my license with them.

I’ll be taking my license application into the State offices tomorrow, after which I’ll finish up some paperwork with Envision and then I’ll finally be ready to originate home loans in Utah once more.

One of the nice things about Envision is that they are licensed in 26 states already (with more to come soon). I don’t foresee a lot of active marketing in other states on my part, but you never know when you’ll get a referral from a client that lives outside Utahor perhaps a client will move out of Utah themselves.

There was no shortage of relief on my part upon hearing the proctor announce I had successfully passed the Utah Mortgage Lender Exam.  It was a little more in depth than I was expecting.  Anyway, I’m glad it’s over.

It turns out I can’t submit my application to the state for seven days so I’ll be biding my time for yet another week.   In the meantime, I continue my search for a brokerage…

It’s finally my turn to take the State Exam, tonight at 6:30 in Murray.  After passing this, I’ll just need to finalize my decision on a brokerage from which I am going to originate mortgages and send in my papers to the state.  I’ll then be legal to once again conduct mortgage business in Utah.

This article from Utah Business Magazine outlines the so-called “new urban” community that Hamlet Homes is building in Murray.  Though this may sound awful to some, I think it’s good to see more efficient use of space within Salt Lake County.  I like the idea of building “up” instead of “out”.

Apparently there are a bundle of people seeking a Utah mortgage license right now.  I called to schedule my state exam and the soonest I could get was nearly two weeks out.  I asked the reservationist why there was such a long wait and she indicated there were just that many applicants, and added that Utah was the only state that currently had an abundance of them.

I thought that was interesting, but to be honest I can’t think why that might be.  Anyway, my exam is scheduled for next week.

For those who aren’t familiar with the process of becoming licensed to conduct mortgage business in the state of Utah as an individual, you need to complete 20 hours of education, take an exam, pay an application fee, and submit to an FBI background check.  These are all good improvements in Utah and I’m sure they’ve helped cut down on the amount of fraud since implemented a few years ago.

This has nothing to do with mortgages in Utah but I thought it was funny and worth telling.

So… I was finishing up a delicious breakfast yesterday at a little place up by the U (don’t recall the name right now, sorry) and while paying, my brother asked the waitress if the burgers were as good as the breakfast.

She quickly responded they were better.  Especially if you get bacon on them.  She then said how she loves the bacon there so much that she even gets bacon when ordering a veggie burger.  And if that weren’t enough, she proceeded to wonder aloud if ham might be better on her veggie burger next time, and that yes, indeed, she’d order ham on the next go.

Good stuff.

Ever had a bait-n-switch interview?  I just had one this morning at New Freedom.  What a waste of time for both parties.

Here’s how it went down:  I have been submitting resumes to a few places lately in the lead up until I become officially licensed, so that I’ll have a brokerage to work from once I become official.  So I sent a resume to New Freedom because they were advertising a need for loan officers.  Well, when I got to the “interview” this morning I quickly learned that they were looking for call center reps (at $8.00/hr) who would eventually become junior loan officers and then, perhaps, become senior loan officers.  That’s not exactly what they were advertising.

The silliest thing is that the hiring person called first to set up the interview, at which time I explicitly asked if they were hiring loan officers, giving them full opportunity to be straight forward about what they wanted, yet they brought me in and wasted my time and theirs anyway. I’m not trying to bash call center jobs (in fact I worked at a call center for a year as an IT Project Manager) - I just would never have gone to meet with this company had I known what they were looking for in the first place.
Needless to say, it was the shortest “interview” of my life.

In reference to the old cliche (or is it a line from a song or a movie?), I’m (nearly) back in the saddle again.  After a few years without a mortgage license in Utah, I’m preparing to take the state exam and once again become a legal agent in the Utah mortgage world.

Since I’ve been heavily involved in the internet over the past several years, I naturally wanted to get myself a site for my mortgage business right away.  Therefore, I present UtahMortgageLoans.net.  I thought briefly about doing a regular website with rates, application forms, industry headlines and the other regular items you see on most mortgage websites, but instead I opted to go with a blog because it will give me a chance to be a little different and opine from my virtual soapbox.

Let the good times roll!