“That’s the first time I’ve ever experienced racism”

Having immigrated to the US at the age of three months with his family, Faiz suddenly found himself on unfamiliar territory. After a while, the abuse got to be too much. “I gave up all my licenses – I had a series 7, 63, 65, 31, 24,” he said, ticking off the various credentials he earned to buy and sell financial products.

Starting over

“It made me stronger, and I learned to adapt,” he said of his forced ouster. Undefeated, he turned to real estate as a second career he practiced from 2002-16. “I was an active real estate agent, but I learned over the years that I was getting burned by fake pre-approval letters,” he recalled. “I would spend time with clients, taking them out, only to realize they weren’t really qualified.”

That’s when he finally ventured into the mortgage industry. “I’ve had enough,” he remembers thinking to himself about the real estate game. “I’m going to study to become a loan officer. I’m going to pre-approve these clients myself and make sure I understand each client. So in 2016 I took the test, passed with flying colors, and became a loan officer. Since my first loan in 2016, I never looked back.”

He does have one regret, he acknowledged: “I started in retail,” he said. “That was a mistake.”

Hard lessons along the way

It seemed like a good idea at the time: “I was told by many that being a broker is not the way to go, that being in retail is better – you have in-house underwriting, that’s how they get you. You have in-house underwriting, in-house processing. I was a retail loan officer with some reputable companies. Toward the end of 2022, I was having my third bay and had about six clients in my pipeline ready. They had just signed contracts, and I had worked with them for over six months – nurturing them, pre-approving them, updating them.”