Today we’d like to introduce you to Rob Watkins.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Rob. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I was born and raised in Dallas in the White Rock Lake area and have lived in Dallas my whole life other than my four years in Lubbock at Texas Tech, where I majored in finance. My story as to why I got into banking and eventually becoming a mortgage lender goes back to my childhood years. Math was always my strongest subject so once I knew I wouldn’t be a professional basketball player, I figured I’d end up working in a field related to numbers. But the main reason I got into banking was because the sweetest and smartest person I’ve ever known, my grandmother Jane, was in banking.
Jane was amazing – She was a straight-A student throughout school, she was the valedictorian at her high school and finished at the very top of her class at SMU, where she received her bachelor’s degree in business. She was soon certified as a CPA, which made her the 4th woman CPA ever in Texas in 1950. Even with all those accomplishments, as a woman, she had difficulty finding a good job and had to work her way up the ladder. She ended up at a bank in East Dallas called First Citizens, where she began as chief accountant and in 1976, she was promoted to senior vice president and Controller of the bank and worked there for the rest of her career until about the time I was born in 1984. Her story and accomplishments have always been inspiring to me and have influenced my personal and professional life.
After college, I started as a credit analyst at a local bank in Dallas where I spent the first nine years of my career. In 2015, I was ready to get out of my comfort zone and take the next step so I took a great opportunity at BancorpSouth to become a mortgage lender.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
When I started as a mortgage lender, it was extremely tough. This was the first time I was in a job that I was in a “production” role as opposed to the administrative/credit side. Particularly just starting out, it’s not easy job to gain the trust of realtors or other referral partners to refer you to help their clients. It takes time to gain the trust of people in the industry which is understandable. Buying a house is the biggest investment most people will make and it’s not an easy thing to refer a new lender without having worked with them before.
In the beginning, a few of my best friends referred me or let me help them with their purchases or refinances, as well as a couple of realtors that gave me a chance with their clients. That handful of special people are the reason I’m still in this business and I am extremely grateful to them.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about BancorpSouth Mortgage – what should we know?
As a mortgage lender at BancorpSouth, I help people purchase or refinance their primary residences, second homes, or investment homes. What sets us apart and the reason I love working there is that we have access to a lot of mortgage products that allow me to give several options to clients to fit their needs. We retain servicing on the majority of our mortgage products meaning they won’t be sold to another bank and my past clients can always contact me after the loan closes with questions. We have an awesome portfolio product called Right@Home, which helps low-moderate income borrowers or people buying property in a low or moderate income census tract. We also have an amazing product for Medical Doctors and Dentists.
What I am known for is more fun though. As I said before, it’s hard to gain the attention of realtors and other potential referral partners. So I decided that I needed to do something that would get their attention and allow me to go visit their offices without feeling like I’m bothering anyone. Earlier I told you about my grandmother Jane, who was my dad’s mom – My other grandmother was named Ouija, who was my mom’s mom. Ouija was also an amazing person and a person that inspired me, but she died while I was in fifth grade so I didn’t get to know her as long as Jane, who died in 2010.
Anyways, Ouiji had the most amazing ginger cookie recipe that my mom continued to make after Ouiji died. I asked my mom to teach me the recipe and her method of making the cookies. Pretty soon thereafter and currently, I’ve become the family’s go-to maker of Ouiji’s famous ginger cookies. So what I started doing was bringing fresh HOMEmade cookies to realtor offices, along with flyers about our mortgage products. I figured, who’s going to be bothered by someone bringing in delicious homemade cookies?
I’m also known for giving people cookies that refer clients to me and at every loan closing I go to, without fail, the borrowers, realtor, and escrow officer at the title company each get a batch of them. My great friend Matt and his wife Heather just bought their second house with me as their lender and Matt joked that they only bought it to get more ginger cookies.
Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
I’m genuine, honest, and trustworthy and I think that is naturally displayed to my clients before, during, and after the mortgage process. I am transparent and lay out in detail all options for loan prospects to help them choose what’s best for them. As I said before, we have some loan products that are unique to our bank, called portfolio loans. We also have some great conventional products that can be extremely beneficial to homebuyers, such as a Freddie Mac product called HomePossible and a FannieMae product called HomeReady. There are loans that a lot of lenders don’t have or don’t realize they have but are very often the best product for homebuyers, particularly ones putting less than 20% down.
The point being, I’m very diligent in learning the benefits of all the mortgage products that we have and going through all these in detail with buyers and refinance clients. This has helped me get a lot of referrals from previous clients because they know I treated them right and made sure they made a great loan choice for them.
Contact Info:
- Address: 10000 N. Central Expressway, Suite 100
Dallas, TX 75231 - Website: www.DFWHomeLender.com
- Phone: 214-926-5836
- Email: Rob.Watkins@bxs.com
Image Credit:
Blake Wilson, BW Content
(took the the two with me in blue shirt and jacket outside / and the one with green tie)
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