COLUMBUS, OH — Within four hours of the Federal Reserve’s quarter-point cut last Wednesday, senior loan officer Brent Vukelich had personally autodialed 14,062 dormant refinance leads from a Plantronics headset older than two of his children, reaching, in this order, his mother, a Cleveland dentist who said he had the wrong number, a Mansfield woman whose husband had died in 2019, and a man named Doyle who wanted to know if Brent had heard the good news.
Vukelich’s branch — a SunTrust-turned-Truist storefront sandwiched between a UPS Store and a Jeni’s in Worthington — had been planning for the cut since August, when corporate sent down a 41-page “Rate Cut Readiness Playbook” whose first action item was, verbatim, “Call literally everyone.”
The mortgage industry has been waiting on a refi wave the way a man stranded in the Sahara waits on rain, and the 25 basis points did not, in fact, deliver one. The average 30-year fixed printed at 6.13% the morning after the cut, which is approximately 380 basis points worse than every loan Vukelich originated between 2019 and the back half of 2022, and still slightly higher than the rate his mother is paying, which is how that call ended.
“He doesn’t really need to be calling me, I have a fixed-rate from 2017,” said Linda Vukelich, 68, who confirmed her son had phoned her twice within the same hour and once put her on hold to take what he later described as “a hotter lead.” The hotter lead was the dentist.
Inside the branch, Truist regional sales lead Marisol Gantt was eating a Jersey Mike’s #13 Mike’s Way over a Bloomberg terminal that had not been logged into since Friday, and described the morning’s outreach as “frankly, a tremendous opportunity to reconnect with the customer.” Asked how many of the 14,062 calls had resulted in a completed application, Gantt swallowed, looked at the number on her screen, and said the pipeline was “early.” The number on the screen was one. The one was Doyle.
By 11 a.m. the branch’s marketing intern had stapled “RATES ARE BACK!” yard signs along the median of High Street, in a font color the corporate brand book lists as “Truist Purple” and that pedestrians described as “bruise.” A Worthington woman who received one of the calls, Patty Erskine, 54, said she had told the loan officer she was currently on a 2.875% from 2021, at which point the loan officer had paused for what she described as “a long, sad inhale,” and then asked if she had any friends.
The branch closed Wednesday with three completed applications, two of which were the same household submitting twice because the wife thought the husband hadn’t done it. Corporate’s after-action report, leaked to the parking lot Friday, listed “net new origination dollars” at $312,400 against a campaign cost of roughly $1.9 million in salaries, dialer licenses, and one severance package belonging to the marketing intern, who had used the wrong shade of purple.
At 7:47 a.m. Monday, Vukelich logged back into the dialer, adjusted his headset, took a long pull from a coffee that said WORLD’S OKAYEST DAD on the side, and clicked into lead number one of 14,062. It was his mother. She did not pick up.