ON THE Go!LO

BY SARAH WOLAK, STAFF WRITER, NATIONAL MORTGAGE PROFESSIONAL MAGAZINE

hen Jordan Bernbaum answers the Zoom call, his appearance reflects a typical work-from-home setting with a tidy desk, a plain background, and a casual blue T-shirt. The faint background street noise adds to the ambiance. It seems like any one of the thousands of online meetings happening at any given moment across the U.S.

But Bernbaum’s not in an apartment in his native Arizona. He’s calling from Istanbul, Turkey, where the 10 a.m. call stateside happens as the Turkish workday winds down.

Bernbaum’s wife, Hadeer, shuffles around in the background of the video call. The couple married in early March after meeting in Turkey. But their marriage wouldn’t have been possible if Bernbaum hadn’t taken his work overseas.

Bernbaum works as a senior loan officer for NEXA Mortgage. He’s been in the mortgage industry since December 2014 and with NEXA since 2018. Up until two years ago, he worked remotely from his apartment — about 30 miles from NEXA’s Chandler, Ariz., headquarters. Now, that’s not the case. “I always took a big trip annually in the fall and would visit a few countries, and I realized that I kept focusing on when the next trip would be,” he said. “While I was in Thailand, I met a group of freelancers who told me they traveled for months at a time and still worked, and that

Winspired me to ask my boss about [my] being able to keep doing loans and travel.”

After comparing his cost of living to would-be travel expenses, Bernbaum found that it was cheaper to live in other countries, including the costs of airfare. He approached his boss, NEXA CEO Mike Kortas, about exploring the option to work beyond Arizona’s borders. “I prepped for an hour-long presentation, and I was given the go-ahead in the first minute,” Bernbaum said.

Kortas was “beyond supportive” of Bernbaum’s decision. “NEXA Mortgage makes life abroad possible because of our massive support platform,” Kortas said. “From corporate support, lenders, and even to vendors used by mortgage professionals alike, everyone is online all the time to support LOs from any location around the globe. Living abroad? No problem. Traveling abroad on vacation? No problem.”

A Downshift From Afar

Bernbaum knows that he could have pursued other freelance gigs while living abroad, but he stuck with what he knew. “I don’t have a background in graphic design or teaching yoga or any of the typical freelance work that I was seeing out there,” he explained. “I wanted to make my job at NEXA work, even though I work weird hours to be congruent with U.S. time.”

Those weird hours to which Bernbaum referred are between 7 p.m. and 4 a.m. Turkey time, which Bernbaum doesn’t mind. (When it’s 7 p.m. in Istanbul, it’s 9 a.m. in Arizona.)

“After my work day, I get to wake