THE BIG THING

BY KATIE JENSEN, STAFF WRITER, NATIONAL MORTGAGE PROFESSIONAL MAGAZINE

Introducing the highly controversial and undisputed champion of the broker channel, with his company checking in at 2,144 loan originators, spanning 219 branches nationwide, totaling $5.07 billion in loan volume this past year, ladies and gentlemen, it’s NEXA Mortgage CEO Mike Kortas.

United Wholesale Mortgage’s No. 1 star player among its broker partners, NEXA Mortgage has more than double the loan officers of its leading competitor, C2 Financial, and 48-year-old Kortas is out there hunting for more in the midst of this “LO boom” he claims is happening.

“Now is the time to grind. It’s about market share now,” Kortas posted on his Facebook page, above another post showing off his NEXA jet.

Most of his LinkedIn and Facebook posts are short motivational videos for loan originators, but that’s not the only reason people flock to his page. Mostly, they love to see the CEO battling other executives and major players in the industry — his main contender being UMortgage CEO Anthony Casa.

In February, Kortas posted a screenshot of Casa’s email that announces the kickoff of UMortgage’s first quarter capital raising venture, saying, “This is funny. Why do you need to raise capital? Hard times? I’ll buy it to save the loan officers you are trying to screw over.”

Kortas claims to be a champion for brokers, who he believes are treated unjustly at times by higherups in the industry. Although he’s considered a hero in some people’s view, to others he’s a menace, a gossip, a man who’s willing to cut you off at the knees if it means staying ahead. One thing they could all agree on is, he’s enormously entertaining to watch.

“There are people who say that I’m as cutthroat as you can get,” Kortas said. “So I’m going to let the industry answer that.”

A FIGHTER’S INSTINCT

Despite how outspoken and fierce he is now, Kortas didn’t start off that way. Aggression wasn’t something he was born with; it was something that life brought out in him. In his early childhood Kortas was polite, kept to himself, and excelled at school.

“I didn’t have the most wonderful upbringing,” Kortas said. “I was a kid who would just take it for a long time and just deal with certain things that were going on in the home.”

But growing up in a broken home caused him to develop some rough edges. Between the ages of 14 and 16, he spent a lot of time in juvenile detention.

At 16, Kortas was in the custody of a foster mother with whom he never formed a close relationship. On his 18th birthday he was thrown out of the house — don’t call it a home — with nowhere to go.

“That was the first time I actually had to sleep in the streets,” Kortas said. “I was an 18-year-old boy that probably looked 15 walking into a homeless shelter. But that’s not the safest place for a kid, even as a male, because you had to go to an all-male homeless shelter. There was a situation that I had to … well, let’s just say I bailed out of that real quick and never went back.”

Instead, Kortas found a barn to sleep in and, with the owner’s permission, that ended up being his home for about a year. He shared a pen with a young calf being raised for slaughter with only a sleeping bag and a hay floor to keep him warm.

Homelessness taught him quite a few valuable lessons, though. For one, he developed an instinct about who he should trust and who he shouldn’t.

“I learned to hate people who say one thing and do another because on the streets you have to rely on, I guess, instincts and your judgment of people,” Kortas said. “Sometimes when you judge a person the wrong way, things go south.”

Going The Distance

Kortas wasted no time in getting to work. While still residing in a barn, he began working two full-time jobs — a landscaper by day and gas attendant by night.

“I actually attest my work ethic today to the landscaping job,” Kortas said. “You’re talking about legitimately digging ditches and shoveling rock. Some people talk about that as a joke, but it was a reality for me.”

But the money from that job alone was not enough to sustain him. Another thing he learned was life on the streets is expensive. He didn’t have the materials to cook so he was always eating out at fast food places, ordering off the dollar menu. So, he began working as a gas station attendant when his landscaper shift ended.

Life’s circumstances had already led him to develop a strong work ethic, but what really lit the fire under him was getting his then-girlfriend pregnant when he was 19.

Stepping Into The Ring

With a baby boy on the way, Kortas scrambled to get his life in order. He needed a job that provided more earning potential and benefits for his son. However, after dropping out of high school three times and never attending college, his options were limited. For the next four years, Kortas worked as a bill collector, which he describes as his college education in sales.

Although some would claim being a bill collector doesn’t make one a salesman, Kortas begs to differ, saying, “Getting somebody to pay money for something they no longer have is the hardest sales job in the world.

“I was orchestrating settlements with big business people at a very young age,” Kortas said. “But it got me talking to executives constantly. And it got me talking to just business like-minded people, even though most of them were small businesses that failed.”

He would constantly refer deals to mortgage companies so his clients could refinance their mortgages and pay off their debts. This is what introduced Kortas to the mortgage industry, and after talking to some loan officers he became interested. When the agency he was working for changed the way it compensated its collectors, he was confident enough to make a career switch.

It wasn’t as simple as Kortas expected, though. He entered the mortgage industry in 1998, during an environment of rising rates, but he saw other people in the industry doing well and used that as motivation. He was determined to leave those days of pumping gas and digging ditches in the past.

“The first six months in the mortgage industry were absolutely brutal,” he said. “I was working commission-only in a new industry, and there was no training back then or licensing. It was, ‘Here kid. Here’s a desk and here’s a phone.’”

Luckily, a man by the name of Devon Sanders from North American Mortgage took Kortas under his wing and showed him how the business works, how to prequalify a purchaser, and how to read an application.

Kortas became experienced in originating subprime loans, getting financing for a customer with a 400 credit score by using referrals from his old bill collection friends.

“I was finally in a business where it didn’t matter where I came from or who I was … as long as I worked my butt off, I could make something of myself,” Kortas said.

After 9/11, rates plummeted, and Kortas reaped the benefits of a thriving industry. He opened his own branch under Nova Star Home Loans, which became one of the company’s top performers nationwide.

He needed to put in that work in order to provide for his growing family, and he was doing very well until his hubris got the best of him.

The Big Beatdown

Just as Mickey the trainer said in Rocky III, “The worst thing happened to you that could happen to any fighter. You got civilized.”

“Those are the years that I look at and say that I was unfocused,” Kortas said. “I forgot where I’d come from. Just like everybody else, I was out partying like crazy, making more money than I should have been making in my 20s. Whenever I didn’t have my son, I was in Vegas … then, of course, the financial crisis hit, and I realized that I couldn’t just step outside and pick money off the trees anymore.”

Kortas made most of his money doing refinances, but once the financial crisis hit in with zero team members. That recognition gave him the confidence to leave his employer, Nova Home Loans, and start his own broker shop.

2008, the fun was over. Businesses were shutting down, and Kortas felt completely defeated.

For years, his brothers-in-law would ask him to start a landscaping business with them, but those memories of performing hard labor under brutal heat led him to say no every time. This time he had no choice but to take them up on their offer.

“I came up with this concept of why don’t we all go and open our own company and pull all of our business together, so that we can each benefit through larger pipelines,” Kortas said. “They all