Mark Cohen, the owner and founder of Cohen Financial Group in Beverly Hills, Calif., finished 2012 as the leading loan producer by dollar volume, with $590 million in loan funded; by units, he had 767 loans originated where he ranked ninth overall.
The list of the Origination News Top 200 loan officers by dollar volume is available
Cohen said he has a heavy emphasis on sales, one he has had since entering the business 27 years ago realizing the unpredictability of rate-sensitive refinance business.
Among his sources are real estate brokers, certified public accountants and business managers. “So I have always paid heavy emphasis to that and that smooths out the volatility in the origination business,” Cohen said.
His business in 2012 benefitted from a feeling among consumers that things have bottomed out and are now back on the way up. Combine that with the low interest rate environment, and “that is a good recipe for a strong market.”
The vast majority of his loans are within a 20-mile radius of his offices, like the west side of Los Angeles, the San Fernando Valley and coast.
For Cohen, mortgage originations are a family business. His mother was the first woman mortgage broker in Los Angeles, and his family had always been involved in real estate. At the time he graduated from law school, she had been in the business for four or five years and he found mortgages to be more interesting than the practice of law.
His company, Cohen Financial is both a mortgage banker and a mortgage broker, with 35% to 40% of the company’s production being banked. It has been operating for 15 years now.
The average loan size is $700,000; recently, he closed a $9.5 million loan. But he added he does a lot of conforming loans as well.
At one point, he said the average loan size was $1 million, but the drop was due to the decline in real estate values.
His office has two people who do commercial and multifamily loans, and Cohen said he prefers to let those who are experts in the product handle it.
Cohen has 12 people who work on his team, and that staff allows him to handle the kind of volume that it does, he noted. The team includes underwriters, processors, people who assist with marketing, “it is a pretty decent size operation.”
Besides his referral sources, he advertises in publications such as the one sent to local public accountants and other local real estate trade magazines. Cohen also has a weekly newsletter sent to a client list of 8,000 to 10,000 people, whom receive an email every Monday morning.
However, he does not do any social media marketing, saying he is “too old school.”
For 2013, business activity has been good, as rates have remained low. There has been a lot of loan sales volume so far, Cohen said. The good thing about southern California is a lot of people are more willing to trade-up to a larger house, he noted, unlike other areas of the nation.
