Lore Magazine - July/August 2007

Heroic Customer Service

Paul Wylie’s rise to the top of the mortgage industry was the result of providing superior customer service and forging valuable business alliances
by Rebecca Landwehr // photographs by Greg Murphy

But instead of a measly weekly handout, the young brothers left the meeting with an interest-free, small business loan.

“You don't want an allowance,” the boys' father told his sons more than a decade ago. “You want money.”

Instead of expecting chores like trash duty and bed making, the two boys entered a joint partnership with their father, Paul Wylie, CEO of Metrocities Mortgage. They didn't know at the time that business relationships such as this would define their father's rise in the mortgage business.

Since founding Metrocities Mortgage (then Metrocity) in April 1990, Wylie has focused on serving the needs of everyone at the signing table: home buyers, Realtors, mortgage brokers, owners/agents and his own employees. He saw an opportunity to provide superior service to the industry by partnering with the best brokerages in joint operating agreements. Today the industry recognizes the value in those relationships, but back then, Wylie was forging new territory.

“At the time, these were innovative alliances,” says Wylie. “It was a company-to-company commitment to provide financing to as many clients as possible.”

The relationships would only hold if both sides were happy – that meant everyone working together to ensure a smooth buying experience.

Of course making the customer happy was – and is – Wylie's mantra. “Heroic Customer ServiceSM” is more than just his company's tagline. Even with his children's fledgling firm, a small vending machine business serving Metrocities' offices, Wylie executed his professional philosophy: Create a win-win-win scenario for all involved. The employees wanted vending machines, the boys wanted money, and the father wanted to teach his children the value of a dollar earned.

It might have been an unorthodox approach, but it worked. Now 17 years old, Nick still runs that vending machine business.

Wylie's own professional career also began at a young age. His entrepreneurial spirit flourished while growing up on a small, rural island near Detroit called Grosse Ile.

“It's French for big island, although really, it's a very small island,” Wylie laughs.

His father was a manager at Chrysler and his mother worked various office jobs. Wylie and his older brother performed chores to earn extra money. On Grosse Ile, that mostly meant lawn work as residents owned big parcels of land that grew plenty of weeds. By the time he was 12, Wylie earned enough cash to buy a secondhand speedboat.

He used the boat for travel and recreation, taking friends for joy rides and driving the boat to junior high. But most importantly, he used the boat as capital to make more money. It was a quick ride to Canada where fireworks were legal. Wylie would buy a choice selection of his favorite small-time explosives and sell them to his friends.

“Now I know it's illegal, but at 12, it just seemed like good business,” Wylie jokes.

Born with a rock-solid work ethic and an admitted sense of frugality, Wylie was hooked on the rush of business. Never afraid to log long hours, he simply loved making money. But while his older brother loved spending money, Wylie held onto his earnings.

“I even loaned money to my parents when I was 14,” says Wylie. “But I didn't charge them interest. I didn't know about interest back then.”

Of course now Wylie is quite familiar with the concept.

Yet despite his love of business, in his youth, Wylie was no button-down-wearing Alex P. Keaton. Instead, picture a Renaissance man, driven to learn for the sake of learning and smitten with a romantic vision of Southern California. A stellar high school athlete, Wylie turned down a track scholarship to maintain control over his education. That meant logging extra shifts at the Chrysler factory to save money for school. (Today at 54, he still runs at 4 a.m. several days a week.)

Freshman year, he attended Michigan State where he excelled but ultimately was bored. So he went back to the factory for six months to save up for an experimental university in Switzerland, the University of the New World. It was an innovative curriculum designed for freethinkers and taught by great artists. Unfortunately the school ran into financial problems and folded just a few months after Wylie arrived.

“It was heartbreaking,” says Wylie.

Stranded in Europe, Wylie bought a used BMW 250 police motorcycle and traveled for almost a year. Ultimately he landed on the island of Mykonos, where he quickly became restless after too much time on the beach.

So it was back to Detroit and back to the factory to earn more money – this time for a move to California. He didn't have a plan but figured he'd finish school on the West Coast.

“I was always drawn to Southern California,” says Wylie, who still lives in Los Angeles County. “The freshness of ideas, the diversity of the people, the topography, the climate, the opportunity – you name it.”

It was 1973 and he purchased a new Plymouth Duster before heading out West. After he arrived, he worked in the Ford factory and easily made friends. By 1975, Wylie joined two of those friends as part owner of a small foreign car repair shop in Santa Monica.

That's where his real estate career began – in an auto shop.

Wylie did little in the way of repairs. Instead he handled the business end: budgeting, planning, advertising, marketing and employee relations. Wylie also oversaw customer service. He saw its impact on the bottom line firsthand and he never forgot it.

“A lot of (my philosophy) came from the customer service skills of owning that car repair shop,” Wylie says. “People want their car fixed and they want it that day. You have to manage vendors and multiple customers. It's similar to the mortgage business although the deadlines are shorter.”

It's an experience that Wylie directly applies to his mortgage business today. Metrocities guarantees it will make its deadlines, ensuring financing in place for all of its closings. Officers have more than 7,000 loan products available for their clients.

Wylie's taste for the real estate business started with a creative loan. He received 100 percent financing to buy the property where the shop sat. It was Wylie's first purchase, and he still owns the land today. He was 25.

Soon, the equity in that property allowed Wylie to start financing other deals. What started as dabbling evolved into a true passion for real estate. But it didn't take long for Wylie to register his dissatisfaction with the individuals arranging his financing. He knew he could provide the customer with better service than he was receiving.

While running the auto repair shop, Wylie met his wife, Delores. He traveled all the way to his beloved Southern California to meet the girl of his dreams – who it just so happened also hailed from Michigan. It was 1980 and Delores was working as a cashier at a grocery store. Extroverted, adventurous and carefree, Delores was everything Wylie wasn't. The two were married in 1982.

“We share the same core values of honesty and integrity, but we're very different,” says Wylie. “I'm the grounding force in the relationship and she's the adventurous one.”

A nature lover, Delores has maintained a menagerie of animals on their property over the years. She even homeschooled the couple's two hockey-loving sons.

By 1985, Wylie sold his stake in the car repair business (but kept the property in his real estate portfolio) and took a job with a local mortgage broker.

“I asked the top producer if I could follow him around and learn,” says Wylie. “I was a quick learner and I modeled myself after him. He was an extrovert so I became an extrovert.”

He immersed himself in his new career, taking home underwriting manuals and devouring them. He learned how to properly package loan solutions and how to talk to underwriters in a non-threatening way.

He became a super mortgage geek – a very successful mortgage geek.

“I marketed myself to financial professionals. If you recognize you're a geek, you can market yourself to other geeks,” he laughs.

However, after several ownership changes at Coastline Financial, Wylie went searching for greener pastures.

“I just wanted a healthy, non-political environment where I could still be independent,” he says.

He couldn't find it. So at 37, with one son at home and another on the way, Wylie opened Metrocity with two partners in April 1990.

The company started smoothly. After two successful years, he felt comfortable with the industry and formulated a long-term strategy. He wanted longevity and stability, and he believed that would come from more “purchase” business rather than “refinance.” He would achieve that with strategic alliances with real estate brokers.

He set his sights on the best: Fred Sands Realtors, then California's largest real estate company and the country's fourth biggest. Wylie courted the company for more than six months.

“I was cautious. I was being careful,” says Fred Sands, now chairman of Vintage Capital. “I thought, ‘He's saying the right things. Let's see if he can perform.'”

In 1993, the deal was in place and Wylie proved himself to Sands.

“Paul doesn't do a lot of talking. He just makes things happen,” says Sands.

Metrocities maintained that partnership with Fred Sands Realtors until the company was sold in 2000. The initial deal was a defining moment in Wylie's career.

“When Fred Sands said ‘yes,' I knew we were on the right track,” recalls Wylie. “That's when I realized this could work.”

Today, Metrocities counts 1,400 employees. In 2006, it closed more than $5.7 billion in loans. Wylie attributes much of the company's success to its commitment to strategic joint ventures with top real estate brokerages. Always providing the best service – be it to those joint ventures, Metrocities' own employees or, ultimately, the customer – has taken Wylie to the top of the industry. Along those lines, in an effort to better control its customer services and loan generation, Metrocities added a mortgage bank to its roster in the late 1990s. Again, by offering the best service to its partners, Metrocities rises to the top.

“I think Paul is a very smart guy,” says Gary Keller, chairman, Keller Williams Realty. “But more than that, he really cares about people. He has a genuine commitment to do the right thing by them every time.”

Keller Williams has approximately 150 associated business arrangements with Metrocities, significantly more than with any other lender. David Osborn, president of core services at Keller Williams, notes that industrywide, 80 percent of these joint ventures fail. That's not the case with Metrocities' relationships.

Osborn believes the successful execution is linked directly to the top. Wylie treats his employees as well as his customers. Among employee benefits are the free use of Wylie's personal condo in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, and the company's in-house scholarship program for employees and their families.

“He's a very good leader and he leads by example,” says Osborn. “It shows at every level of the company.”

That commitment to service is entrenched at every level of Metrocities, even in those well-stocked vending machines still tended to by that grown-up boy who went looking for an allowance and came out with a loan.

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