Mortgage Industry Subprime
After his military service his brother Jose introduced him to the mortgage industry during the height of the Sub Prime era in 2004. Working out of a company in Rockville, MD called Empire Financial; he worked with his brother learning the ins and outs of the industry. Working his way from being a newbie to managing the pricing and mortgage structuring of the companies’ loan officers. In 2009 the market crashed, and the Subprime mortgage crisis caught up with Parada. At this point he couldn’t afford his expensive condominium anymore and he was forced to downside to a small apartment. At one-point Parada had to give back his Cadillac to get a used red ford truck where he lived out of for a while. He would sleep in his truck and then go in the office early enough to wash up and change before anyone would get in the office .
Once he was layoff from his Mortgage position, he worked odd jobs and was maintaining a lower steady income outside from the mortgage industry. During this time, he met his future wife that worked in the same building where he worked before. He was just recently remarried and lost everything financially he had built up and was forced to restart from zero.
He decided to move with his wife, daughter and newborn boy from Maryland to New Jersey to start all over again. He considered New Jersey the state where the roots of his family’s American dream were and all his childhood memories. He hoped to regain the mindset to rebuild with a fresh start because of his attachment to New Jersey.
New York City Great Recession aftermath
In 2010 Parada went to New York City to begin a career as a stockbroker at John Thomas Financial on Wall Street. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out due to the current market’s situation at the time but luckily for him because, John Thomas Financial was shut down by the Securities and Exchange commissions for Fraud. He then got a job at Bank of America in Times Square on the Ave of the Americas as a Mortgage pre-underwriter. Again, the current mortgage industry was falling apart and his position there didn’t last long.
It was during this time that Glenn Parada found himself without a place to call home and without a job. He went on desperate mode and started looking for work all over Times Square. He would walk up and down Times Square applying at all types f positions in stores, restaurants and anything in sales. He had his wife in New Jersey staying with a relative with a toddler and a newborn waiting on him every night to come back from New York City.
Broke with only his suits to wear and with his want to succeed and family motivated him to constantly walk up and down to Central Park and all-over Mid-town Manhattan looking for work. On the way he became friends with the street vendors, the ticket sellers and restaurant workers. They would call him “Wallstreet” because he shared his story with them. At times street vendors would give him food and sodas for free because they respected what he was doing. He became friends with an Egyptian food vendor and decided to try to sell comedy tickets to make some fast cash. This is when he would find out the sad reality of many of the street vendors getting to know them personally.
Mortgage Comeback in New Jersey
Parada decided to sign a lease on an apartment in Freehold, New Jersey without having a job or money. He out on his best suit and went around town introducing himself and transitioned himself in the restaurant industry. Within a few months Parada got hire to manage a team of new sales associates that want to become loan officers in a mortgage company based out of Parsippany, NJ. Without knowing the new mortgage material or having any experience in mortgage training hew grew a team of 4 people to 60 plus licensed loan officers in 6 months. He got promoted to Vice President of Corporate Training in less than a year. He parted way with the company due to disagreements.
Parada went on to work for other mortgage companies looking for opportunities to rebuild what he did before but found out that people didn’t share his vision. After many upsets, hardships and hard stop separations from mortgage companies. He decided to start planning to put a mortgage company together with everything he has learned and, doing the opposite of what all the other mortgage companies did that he didn’t like.
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