Licensed State: Colorado

  • Eric Van Swol

    About Eric

    Eric Van Swol is early in his mortgage career and has the drive to match the ambition. Championship trophies and gold medals do not tend to be handed out in the mortgage industry, but the hunger to compete is there, and it goes into the work he does for prospective and current clients alike.

    He graduated from Hope College with a B.A. in History and Communication, along with Spanish, which he speaks fluently. Forever a Dutchman in more ways than one, he likes sports almost as much as he likes competing and sports metaphors.

    Born and raised in Grand Rapids, he knows the area well and has traveled extensively across Michigan, which in his not-so-humble opinion is comfortably a top five state. Contact him to find out what the rest of the list looks like.

  • Michael Piccola

    Michael Piccola

    About Michael

    Michael earned his B.A. from Northern Kentucky University and started in lending in 2013 on the direct sales side, where the point was to learn how the industry actually worked. He moved off retail and onto a mortgage lending team in 2017, and in June 2022 he opened his own branch in Cincinnati with The Mortgage Exchange.

    That progression — sales floor, lending team, running a branch — means he has seen a file from every side of it.

    Outside work he is with his wife and two daughters. He golfs and watches sport when the family calendar allows.

  • Gwen Sanger

    Gwen Sanger

    About Gwen

    Gwen has been originating since 2005. Before that she spent eighteen years with a healthcare insurance company.

    She is licensed in eleven states: Colorado, Kentucky, Ohio, North Carolina, Indiana, Florida, Tennessee, Georgia, Texas, Missouri and Michigan. She has experience across conventional, VA, FHA and home equity lines, and specializes in DSCR investment loans.

    What she enjoys most is the challenged borrower, the person who has already heard no somewhere else or believes their situation is too complicated to solve. She does not judge a file on one piece of the financial picture. She wants the whole story, what got someone where they are and what they are trying to accomplish, and then she will dig through every avenue she can find. Difficult files do not bother her, and giving up while a solution might still exist does.

    The question she hears most is what the best rate is. Her answer is that it depends on what you are trying to accomplish, because the lowest number is not always the best deal once you account for how long you intend to keep the loan and what the structure costs you overall. Once she understands the bigger picture she can lay the options side by side.

    Gwen is a native Coloradan who grew up on a ranch, which is where the appreciation for hard work and treating people right comes from. She has been married to her husband for fifty years. They have one daughter and a Corgi who keeps them entertained. They have served as 4-H leaders, and these days they spend their time with friends, bowling and playing cards.

    She wants borrowers to know she does not take anyone's business for granted. The goal is not just approval. It is earning the trust and staying alongside the client all the way to the closing table.

  • Braydin Mehnert

    Braydin Mehnert

    About Braydin

    Braydin built his foundation at a small community bank, where lending was relationship-driven and every file had a person attached to it. He later helped scale a mortgage startup through a period of rapid growth, which taught him how complex transactions actually get managed at volume rather than in theory.

    Today he works with homeowners and real estate investors, and his focus is deal structure. The files that come to him tend to be the ones that did not fit somewhere else, and structuring those is the part of the job he enjoys most.

    He is licensed across eleven states, which is a wide footprint for one officer and reflects how much of his business travels with the client rather than the market.

  • Daniel Lawton

    Daniel Lawton

    About Daniel

    Daniel wrote his first mortgage in March of 2014. He lives in Will County and serves the southwest suburbs of Chicago along with counties from south of the city to north of it.

    Conventional purchase loans are his highest volume, but a growing share of his work is non-QM for self-employed business owners and investment financing, particularly for buyers moving into short-term rentals.

    His best work is with self-employed borrowers, especially the ones who are stuck at a bank or a standard lender that cannot make the income work. He has rescued more of those files than any other kind.

    On rate, his answer is simple. He does not create the rate environment. His job is to help each client navigate the market and structure the financing around what they need. He will also, given the opening, brag about how fast the in-house team closes.

    Daniel has coached hundreds of kids in his local school district over the past several years. He is part of the Plainfield Lions and belongs to a networking group that gives back to local families and businesses.

  • Keri Bernardi

    Keri Bernardi

    About Keri

    Keri has been writing mortgages full time since 2011. Before that she was a consumer loan officer handling auto loans, home equity lines and personal loans, which turns out to be useful background for a borrower whose credit needs work before a mortgage is realistic.

    She works Colorado Springs, Denver and Pueblo in Colorado, and Pinellas County, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota and Naples in Florida. Most of her volume is VA and FHA, along with DSCR loans for investors and bank statement loans for the self-employed.

    The files she is best on are the ones that arrive damaged. Credit repair, credit counseling, first-time buyers who have been told no, and self-employed borrowers whose tax returns understate what they actually earn. This year she has taken on four loans another lender had already declined and closed them.

    The question she gets most is what rate she can get someone. Her answer is that she will not throw out a number that looks good and does not reflect the actual file. What you are offered depends on your credit profile, the loan type, the property, and whether you choose to pay points, and she would rather take a few details first and then show you the real options and what each one means over the life of the loan.

    Keri was born in Ohio, spent thirty years in Colorado and now splits her time between Colorado and Florida. She has a husband, two daughters and four pets, she runs, she travels, and she volunteers at the humane society walking dogs. She has served on the board of the Colorado Springs Fire Foundation for the past five years.

    Her own account of what makes her different is that she leads with her heart. Plenty of loan officers say that. She would rather demonstrate it through transparency, communication and honesty.