Broker straddles residential and commercial spaces

It’s hard out there for a residential broker. What if, to circumvent shrinking margins, one decided to dabble on the commercial side as well – straddling both worlds to mitigate the perils of a tightened market? Wouldn’t that be something?

That’s precisely what Moe Ashor, mortgage broker at Edge Home Finance Corp., has opted to do. In hearing him speak of the dual roles, he’s loving every minute of it. “I wanted to be able to be the guy in Denver,” he told Mortgage Professional America in a recent interview. He then refers to himself in the third person to illustrate the goal: “Moe’s the guy. He can do residential, he can do VA, FHA, commercial. He can help you buy a skyscraper or a house on a prairie kind of thing.”

Taking on both roles has been eye-opening: “It opened up a whole new world for me,” he said. “Funny enough, a lot of what makes being a mortgage loan officer difficult on the residential side doesn’t exist on the commercial side. They are very buttoned-up ever since 2008, and everything that happened then,” he said of the residential space while invoking the dark days of the Great Recession. “On the commercial side if they’re credit-worthy, great. Their bank statement shows they’re bringing in enough money, that’s all we need. Let’s close that loan; let’s wait for the appraisal and that’s it. It’s more of a common-sense thing. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.”