Meagen A. Duran

I've been a mortgage lender for 11 years, and before that I worked in title and escrow, so I've been in real estate since 2003. Real estate has always been in my family - my grandfather was an auctioneer, my grandmother was an art appraiser, and my dad was a real estate appraiser. My day is spent guiding others into homeownership and into financial freedom. I visit with clients who are looking to purchase homes, I work with real estate agents, investors, and financial advisors, and I get people prepared to purchase a home. For some people, life gets hard and they have to live off of credit cards, so I refinance their homes to alleviate that debt load, giving them room to breathe and thrive. Education is a big part of this for me - there's no education for young people who are getting credit cards, and nobody's teaching them about utilization and how to get past credit card debt. What inspired me to become a lender was that I closed home loans for my previous employer for years, and I saw people showing up at closing not really knowing what they were buying or what their loans were. The lender wouldn't show up, and they were kind of left on their own. I knew I could be better than some of the lenders I'd closed with, and I could help people be confident and comfortable in their home buying process. I love helping veterans especially - I had a veteran that I closed with the other day who didn't think they could buy because of things in their past, and they bought this amazing home and their kids were just through the roof happy. That's my why - so that people can live that American dream.