Mortgage banker's inner city success earns entrepreneur honor

Real Estate Weekly,  May 19, 1999  

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When Raymond Bruce, a senior vice president of African American-operated Carver Federal Savings Bank, looked to procure a loan to renovate the Harlem brownstone he owned with his wife, he knew just where to turn.

Enter Nadine Malone, president of Madison Home Equities, Inc., one of New York's fastest growing mortgage banking firms and one of the largest providers of FHA-approved home mortgages for minorities. In fiscal year 1998, Madison Equities, which is headquartered in Lake Success, NY, originated 863 loans totaling $134.6 million - up from 738 loans totaling $119.8 million the year before. Not only was one of those loans for Mr. Bruce, but the firm's remarkable activity earned Malone the number two spot on Dun & Bradstreet and Entrepreneur magazine's list of the country's Top 10 female entrepreneurs in 1998.

"There is an extremely strong need for home mortgages for people, primarily minorities, who live in inner-city areas," says Malone. "A common misconception is that people want to move from areas often deemed as 'undesirable,' when in truth, they just want quality housing in those neighborhoods."

And no one has recognized and provided a service for this lucrative niche in the home mortgage market quite as successfully as Malone. "Minorities are turned away for home mortgages at a rejection rate much higher than that of whites, and many of these people are hard-working, double-income families simply trying to better their lives."

Most of Malone's clients are working-class people who receive Federal Housing Administration-backed loans to buy houses throughout Nassau County, Brooklyn, Queens and The Bronx in communities like Bedford Stuyvesant, Flatbush, Ozone Park, Soundview, Wakefield, Rosedale, Jackson Heights, Hempstead and Freeport. They are corrections officers, mass transit employees, hospital workers and bank clerks. About 70 percent of her clients are minority, mostly black, and 20 percent of those clients are single mothers.

Malone is especially responsive to the predicament of single mothers, as she is raising her nine-year-old son, John, on her own. "My son is my sanity barometer - he lets me know when I've stayed at work past dinner time one too many nights," she says.

Typically, Malone works six days a week, an average of 13 hours a day. She starts around 9 a.m. and finishes about 11 p.m. Her evenings are often punctuated by a closing at a client's home or in the office.

A self-made woman in the true meaning of the phrase, Malone graduated high school at age 16, with the intention of becoming a lawyer. But during the time she was taking college courses, she joined the sales department of a small home-improvement loan company. The rest is history.

In 1985, with a $7,500 personal line of credit on a checking account, she started Madison Resources, a leader today in home improvement loans. A year later, with $250,000 earned from that business, Malone, then 28, opened Madison Home Equities.

Malone named her mortgage banking company after Dolly Madison, an early first lady who, by example, championed women's rights. Since its inception in 1986, Madison Home Equities has grown steadily and Malone has expanded her offices three times in the same Lake Success building to accommodate her growing space requirements.

As a testament to her success, the majority of her business comes from word of mouth and referrals, says Malone. "The reason our business has been so successful is that we understand our clientele and work hard to design a program to suit each potential borrower's needs. At Madison Home Equities, we specialize in customization."

Since its founding, Madison Home Equities, has written over $1 billion in mortgage loans, helping its diverse clientele achieve the American Dream of home ownership.

COPYRIGHT 1999 Hagedorn Publication
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning