Florida Mortgage Licenses

Many mortgage brokers and lenders on the East Coast find themselves with customers who ask them if they can do their loan for their condo or house in Florida. You can close that loan only if you are licensed in Florida.

Florida is a relatively easy state to get your license. For companies, they offer 3 levels of licensing – broker, correspondent lender, or mortgage lender. Each of the company licenses requires a principal to have taken 24 hours of classroom education and then to have passed a test. This requirement is not as onerous as it sounds. The classroom education is given by various approved schools in Florida. Many of my clients schedule the classroom work the weekend before the test and take the test the following Tuesday. The classroom work is geared totally towards the exam and so far all of my clients have passed the test on the first try. The principal must also have 1 year of mortgage broker experience.

If you don’t want to deal with minimum net worth requirements or surety bonds, you apply for a mortgage broker business license. The major restriction with the mortgage broker business license is that all of your loan officers must be licensed individual mortgage brokers.

If you need to get certified financial statements for another state anyway, go for the correspondent lender license. You get much higher income from your brokering. But you need to maintain a $10,000 surety bond and show the Florida Department of Financial Regulation that you have $25,000 minimum net worth and that is where the certified financial statement comes in. Mortgage lenders must maintain $250,000 net worth.

There is also a fingerprint requirement, but no in-state office required.