With over a decade of experience, Army Veteran and West Point graduate Patton Gade is a top expert in military lending. As the National Director of Military Lending at UMortgage and the #1 Scotsman Guide Ranked VA Loan Originator, he’s dedicated to educating veterans and industry professionals on the benefits of VA loans. Patton leads a team of VA experts, working to expand homeownership opportunities for military members while breaking down common misconceptions. Passionate about service, leadership, and education, he’s a trusted advocate for veterans navigating the mortgage process.
In this episode:
- Joey Romero introduces Patton Gade, National Director of Military Lending at UMortgage
- From Military to Mortgages: Patton Gade’s journey into VA lending
- Understanding VA loans, eligibility requirements, and how veterans can maximize their benefits
- Challenges and advantages of VA loans, including the removal of loan limits in 2020
- Common misconceptions about VA loans and why many veterans hesitate to use them
- Tech & Mortgages:Â The evolving role of technology in the mortgage industry and its impact on VA lending
- Expert Advice for Veterans:Â Navigating homeownership with VA loans
Episode:
Narrator  Welcome to The Norris Group real estate podcast, a show committed to bringing you insights from thought leaders shaping the real estate industry. In each episode, we’ll dive into conversations with industry experts and local insiders, all aimed at helping you thrive in an ever-changing real estate market. continuing the legacy that Bruce Norris created, sharing valuable knowledge, and empowering you on your real estate journey. Whether you’re a seasoned pro or a newcomer, this is your go-to source for insider tips, market trends and success strategies. Here’s your host, Craig Evans.
Joey Romero  Welcome everybody to The Norris Group Real Estate Podcast. Today, we have a very special guest. Our guest today is Patton Gade, the National Director of Military Lending for UMortgage with over a decade of industry experience, Patton Gade has established himself as a top expert in the field of Military Lending, holding the title of #1 Scotsman Guide Ranked VA Loan Originator. His extensive knowledge and deep understanding of the unique needs of the military members and veterans stems from his service as an Army veteran and his education at the United States Military Academy at West Point. As the National Director of Military Lending at UMortgage, Patton leads with passion and dedication. He oversees a team of VA experts committed to expanding homeownership opportunities for the military community and breaking down misconceptions surrounding VA loans. Patton’s approach is not only about securing the best rates, but also about educating borrowers and industry professionals on the benefits of VA loans, ensuring that veterans receive the Mortgage Solutions they deserve. Patton is not just a leader in his professional life. He is also a devoted husband and father who cares deeply about his team and their development. He is known for his tireless work ethic and his genuine commitment to the well being of those he serves, whether you’re a borrower looking for guidance or an industry professional seeking some insight, Patton’s expertise and leadership make him a valuable resource in the world of mortgage landing. Let’s welcome, Patton Gade. All right. Welcome everybody to The Norris Group Real Estate Podcast. We have a really cool guest today, last weekend, I spent Saturday at the Financial Freedom summit put on by White Feather Investments, and they had a myriad of presenters and speakers that were all there to increase awareness, educate and really try to have military first respond, Military and First Responders get into the game of real estate. And Patton was one of the speakers, Patton Gade here. And it really struck me some of the things that he was talking about and the whole goal we were just talking about this, Patton, and I of this interview, and having him on is so that we can increase awareness of the VA loan, because it’s such a great product, and it’s from what I heard on Saturday, and just a little research I’ve done is very underutilized. So, Patton and welcome to our show.
Patton Gade  I appreciate you having me, Joey. It’s great to be here.
Joey Romero  So, Patton, where are you originally from?
Patton Gade  So, I grew up. I grew up in North Dakota, then I went from there. I went to West Point, went into the army. You know, moved around quite a bit, and then I got out of the Army in 2002 after eight years of active duty, and I actually moved back to North Dakota. Was there for a couple years, and then corporate America started moving me around, and I ended up landing in Phoenix, so North Dakota boy from, you know, 50 below. And now I’m in Phoenix, and I’ve been here, gosh, since 2006 so it’s been a minute awesome about negative 26 to positive 120 you know, I’ve got both ends of the spectrum gone.
Joey Romero  I thought it was bad this week, and we’re trying to go watch my boy play baseball in Iowa, and his game got canceled because it was going to be 20 degrees. I can’t imagine negative numbers. So tell us, what was it like growing up there, and what are the aspirations of a little kid growing up in North Dakota?
Patton Gade  You know what it’s really a great place to grow up and a great place to raise a family like you don’t know any different when you’re a little kid and it’s 20 below, right? You’re just playing in the snow, all bundled up, and you don’t realize how good it is, maybe out by the beach, or live in San Diego or something like that. So it’s a great place to grow up, you know. Crime was low, you know, there wasn’t a huge drug problem. You know, things have probably changed over the years, but, you know, they’re not too many things you can get in trouble doing, and so you’re outside a ton. You know, the weather’s beautiful in the summertime, and it’s a great place to grow up. And I’ll tell you, you know, I grew up with a name like Patton. You know, my parents were patriot and you know, they taught us to, you know, they really stressed to us as at a young age that, you know, you should be a servant to the people around you. And this country is a fantastic, you know, it’s best country in the world. There’s no doubt about it. And, you know, just the opportunities that we’re given and so they were like, look, you’re going to serve your country in some way, shape, manner and form. Not that you have to go into the military, but you need to serve your fellow man and give back to the people around you. And so, you know, my life was just kind of like that, growing up and so, you know, it was pretty natural for me to go into the military. And it was an opportunity, you know, we grew up on a farm, you know, we didn’t really farm, but we had horses and stuff, and like, 20 acres out in the middle of nowhere. But, you know, we grew up and pretty poor. And so my only opportunity to go to college was to, you know, let the military pay for it in some manner. And so I decided to go to West Point, and was fortunate enough to get in, get accepted there. And, you know, spent eight years active duty. And you know, when I got out of the Army, you know, I still was looking for a way to serve and I went into medical sales, and I really felt like I found a great company, and I worked for Johnson, at Johnson for quite a while, and they had a really strong culture, and, you know, about service and taking care of others. And then I just kind of fell into the mortgage industry and realized that I could, you know…
Joey Romero  I’ll get into that a little bit. I want to expand on a couple of things, first, you know, like, so it was important, but where did that come from? Did you have some early mentors? Was that maybe your dad, your mom?
Patton Gade   My parents were both school teachers, and even now, you know, my dad passed away, you know, 13 years ago or something, and there are people that I run into or connect with online, or whatever that are from that area, and consistently, I mean, throughout my whole life, really, we’d run into somebody at the grocery store or something, and they’d somebody go, ‘Hey, Mr. Gade, how are you?’ I’d look at him. I’d, you know, just a little kid, and I’d be like, ‘Dad, how do you know that guy?’ you know, they’d be 20 something or 30 or whatever, and because he’d been a teacher forever. And so I constantly saw the people that my dad was, you know, he impacted their lives. I’ve seen, you know, kids that were troublemakers, and you know, he’d have them in his office as a school principal, and they would sit there and do their work in his office literally every day, all week long, and then to see like I was thinking specifically about one young man that was, you know, being raised by his grandparents and didn’t have really his parents in his life. And he actually sat in my dad’s office for maybe two or three years, like, literally every day, because the teacher couldn’t handle him, and Dad would have him there. And then this kid ended up growing up getting great grades, excelling in high school, and he ended up going to West Point. So you take, you know, so my dad had a super big impact on young kids his whole life. And it was, my parents were just all about service, just taking care of other people and and treating people the right way. And it was, it was inspiring.
Joey Romero  You know, I coach travel baseball. And one of the things that people are surprised that we tell them, you know, we always talk about being great teammates, but, you know, we’re not also trying to develop baseball skills and being a great teammate, but we’re trying to develop great young men.
Patton Gade  Yeah.
Joey Romero  You know, and that’s really important to the core of what we do and why we actually have service projects. You know, we don’t, we show up as a team, and, you know, put hygiene packs together for the homeless, or, you know, teacher packs. Now, you came from two teachers. Did you ever think about going into that profession?
Patton Gade  Oh, gosh, no. I mean, that’s a rough life. You know, it’s, you know, it’s…
Joey Romero Well, you get summers off. Remember, that’s, that’s the big sale, right?
Patton Gade  You get some summers off, right? But, you know, the pay is not very good. You know, not very many people truly value educators the way they should. And, yeah, you know, especially once I went to West Point, stuff like that wasn’t, that wasn’t in the cards for me.
Joey Romero  So, let’s get into that a little bit…
Patton Gade  Education is important. I mean, my job now is educating people on like VA loans and how they can use them and how they can, so I spend a ton of my time educating not only borrowers, but realtors.
Joey Romero  And that’s funny, like now we, the education that we choose to engage with is almost nothing like what we got when we were, you know, in school. You know, that’s a whole different topic for another story. Now, you were a helicopter pilot in the service. What kind of helicopter did you fly?
Patton Gade  I was a Black Hawk pilot, so I spent eight and a half years doing that, and commanded a company in the 101st airborne and it was a great. I always tell people it was a great way to spend your 20s. I don’t know if I’d want to be doing that today, necessarily, but, yeah, it was, it was a lot of fun. And we’ve got, it’s always fun when you get a bunch of old aviators together and they start telling stories, and, yeah, I almost died. There I was, you know, like doing all the hand gestures and stuff.
Joey Romero  Did you ever serve at a time where there was deployments?
Patton Gade So I, my first assignment out of flight school was to Korea, and that’s not really a deployment. I get that. But, you know, I graduated from West Point ’94 and then I was a company commander when 911 happened. But then it took a while for things to ramp up, and I ended up leaving the Army middle of 2022, or, I’m sorry, 2002 so you, you know the the second Gulf War didn’t really kick off until early, ’03. So, I kind of missed both. And I had, I kind of had some survivor guilt, I’ll be honest with you, like, after wearing uniform for eight or 12 years, really, and then, missing the deployment to Iraq by six months. You know, I was sitting there watching it on, you know, Fox News and CNN, and kind of going, Man, I should really be there. So it was kind of a weird time for me.
Joey Romero  So, you got you spent eight and a half years, what as you’re going through, what type of training did you get? What did you think you were going to do when you left the, you know, the army?
Patton Gade  You know what? I had no idea what I was going to do. I ended up, you know, had a bunch of people that went into sale, different sales jobs and and whatnot. And I thought to myself, like, ‘I never want to be in sales’, like, because you, you think of sales as, like, a used car type thing, right? And if you’re a used car salesman out there, I’m sorry.
Joey Romero  Like the Glengarry, Glen Ross guys, right?
Patton Gade  That’s right, that’s right, right? You know, always be closing and all the stuff, right? And you don’t think of that as an honorable profession, really. But then I read a book, and it was called Integrity Selling. And really, the it, what matters is how you define selling, and your understanding of what selling is. And, you know, I read that book, and it’s like, look, somebody has an issue. They have a problem. You have something that will solve their problem, the natural exchange of value, they’re willing to pay for something that solves their problem, and if you have it to sell, like, that’s just a mutual exchange of value. And so, so that really clicked with me. And I went, ‘wait a minute, you know this, this really makes sense’. And so that was my first job out of the army, was in medical sales, and I did that for, gosh, 12 years with a couple of different companies, and had a lot of fun doing it. And then, like, I said, I just kind of fell into mortgages.
Joey Romero  Yeah. So, so let’s talk about that. How did you end up in the lending space?
Patton Gade  Yeah. So, I had one of my West Point classmates, was happened to he put something on Facebook and and was like, ‘Yeah, we’re gonna be in town’ And I said, ‘hey, when you’re Phoenix, let’s, you know, let’s get together. Let’s have a beer, let’s hang out.’ And he was here with his wife, and so we set up a dinner, and my wife and I met him and his wife, and then there was one other guy that we both knew that showed up. And so the five of us had dinner, and he was like, ‘You need to come work for me.’ And I was like, ‘I’m good, you know, I’m good’. And then about six months later my company, there’s some weird stuff going on, and I and my spidey sense was kind of going off, like, wait a minute, something’s not quite right here. And so I called my wife. I’m like, ‘I think I need to leave this company. I need to sneak up in’. And she, she goes, ‘call that guy we had dinner with’. And I go, ‘What guy?’ ‘Remember that guy?’ And I go, ‘oh yeah.’ She, you know, brought back to my memory and so I called him. I go, ‘Hey, you said, can work for you? What do you do?’ And he said, ‘mortgages.’ And I go, ‘Oh, all right. Don’t know anything about him, but you know.’ And he’s, ‘I’ll hook you up with the guy that manages the office there in Phoenix, and you can go talk to him.’ And I went and spent like, two hours with him, and kind of learned a little bit about what he did. And I’m like, wait a minute, I’ve been in sales for 12 years. I’m a math geek, like, so the math part of it should be really easy, and, like, this might be really good. So I jumped at that. And, you know, a few years later, turns out I do have an aptitude for him, and so I have a lot of fun doing it. So it’s been the perfect career for me, and I’ve been doing it now, gosh, almost, you know, 10 and a half years.
Joey Romero  Now, I was looking at your LinkedIn profile, and I did see all the sales before you got into lending. Now, everything has been, you know, lending, lending, lending. It wasn’t till you’ve got to UMortgage that you were actually named the National Director of Military Lending.
Patton Gade  Yeah.
Joey Romero  Now, was that when you pivoted and switched over to… specifically, or had you been doing that all the time?
Patton Gade When I first got into mortgages, I mean, I quickly learned that the people that I connected, you know, I was in a call center, right? So we’re calling, you know, it’s like cold calling, and it’s like, ‘Hey, you put your information online somewhere, it looks like you want to refinance. Can we talk?’ And it’s click, click, click, click, click, click. And then I realized that there’s a box check that said veteran. And I realized that if I said hey, it says, Here, you’re a veteran. What service were you in? People would oftentimes answer that question. And so if you get five seconds, maybe you get 10, maybe you get 30. Maybe you get two minutes, five minutes, and pretty soon you’ve got some sort of relationship. And then you can, then you can get to the bottom of, you know, is there a problem here I can solve? But I realized the veteran to veteran connection was key. And then the second thing I realized, or over the course of, you know, the first couple years, is I realized that in lending, very, very, very few loan officers who do mortgages actually understand the nuance of a VA loan. And then the second part about that is that they don’t speak the same language as a veteran. They don’t know what an LES is, they don’t know what an ETS date is. They don’t know what any of those things are. And so it was very natural for me, when I would talk to a veteran, that we would be speaking the same language, and sometimes we had the same experiences, or happened to be stationed at the same place at the same time, or things like that. And oftentimes, you know, a lot of, in most businesses, you know, personal connection is so key to the business and so I realized, and so I got really good at VA loans. And over the course of time, you know, 2022 I was the number one guy in the country for VA loans.
Joey Romero  I was about to say that.
Patton Gade  2023 I was number two in the country. And my wife, never lets me forget that. Like you remember it’s like Ricky Bobby, you know, if you’re not first, you last. And so like…
Joey Romero  Well, where we got right now, do you keep it running?
Patton Gade  Yeah. So, 2024 numbers aren’t out, but I should be, you know, in the top five or 10, you know, considering there’s, you know, hundreds of 1000s of loan officers in the country, I feel like sheriff,, that’s pretty good.
Joey Romero  So, let’s back it up a little bit. So the very first, you know, VA loan happened in 1944 that’s astonishing to me. Now, why was the program even put together? What was the whole purpose of the VA loan?
Patton Gade  You know, so, it was part of the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act. Often people call it the GI Bill, right? So it was, had to do with people coming back from World War Two. And how can we give these guys that have been overseas for, you know, little, in some cases, several years. How can we get them a leg up and get them, you know, integrated back into society? And so there was an education portion of that, which still stands today as the GI Bill benefits. And then they put a home loan benefit in there. And at the time, you know, if it’s a one time use thing, you could use it once, and it expired. I want to say it expired 10 years after you left the service. And then over time, you know, the VA loan has morphed. It’s changed. You know, the rules change a little bit all the time, and so it’s important to kind of stay up and with what the new rules are. But yeah, the benefit itself has changed significantly over time, and, it’s really the most powerful tool in real estate at this point.
Joey Romero  Now, the estimates that I’ve seen, and what I heard from the stage that Saturday was that the percentage of people that are using, or the usage of the VA loan, is somewhere in like 11 to 15%?
Patton Gade  Yeah, that’s right. You know, there’s somewhere around 20 million veterans and active duty people in the United States, and only somewhere around, you know, it depends on what you read, but somewhere around 12, 13% of veterans have ever used their VA loan benefits, which…
Joey Romero  So what are… Yes, and that’s why, that’s, I mean that literally, that stat that you said, that you were talking about on the stage, is the reason I said we got to have Patton on. So, what’s the criteria? How can, like, ‘Hey, I spent two months in the service, and I get a VA loan?’
Patton Gade  Yeah, no, it’s not quite that easy. So, once you’re if you’re active duty, once you’ve served in your first unit for longer than 90 days, so the time in basic training doesn’t count the time in your AIT or individual training doesn’t count, but once you get to your unit, once you’ve been there 90 days, you’re eligible. Now, if you served in active duty and then got out, you have to have served at least two years, and it depends on when you serve, so the rules are going to be a little bit different if you serve like Vietnam era or before that. So, they change based on the time period a little bit, but in general sense, if you serve two years active duty and then got out of the military, you’re going to be eligible for VA loan. Now, if you’re in the Guard or Reserves, you have to have served at least six years and done all your, you know, your weekend drills and your two weeks in the summer. So you have to do all six years of that, or especially, and this is super common over the past, you know, 10, 20, years, when we had all these deployments going on. If you were activated for longer than 90 days, then you’re going to be eligible for VA loans. So you’ll have a DD214, that shows that active duty time when you were called up on title 10 orders. And you’ll be eligible at that point as well.
Joey Romero  What if I’m just starting out and my service gets cut down because of an injury?
Patton Gade  So, if you get separated because of some sort of disability, then you may still be, may still be eligible. So, the other. The other thing, it’s the type of discharge you get. It does matter. So if you had a bad conduct discharge or dishonorable discharge, you’re not going to be eligible for a VA loan. If you regard a reserves, it has to be an honorable discharge. It can’t be a general discharge or something like that. It has to be honorable but, yeah, you may have some options. If you were separated because of an injury, you know, you blotch me, and they’re like, Yeah, you let Yeah, or you lost a limb or something, they separated you. Yeah, you you’re probably still going to be eligible, but we’d have to do a little bit of paperwork with the VA to double check that.
Joey Romero  So, when somebody is looking for a VA loan, what’s the first thing that they need to do?
Patton Gade  Well if you’re thinking about using a VA loan, the first thing you need to do is find a loan officer that is competent and good at VA loans. And it doesn’t really matter necessarily the company that you choose. Every company is going to have different, you know, maybe different rates and fees. But frankly, you could be with the best company in the world, and with a loan officer that just doesn’t do VA loans, and you might have a rough time doing. The analogy I use with people is, if you golf one time a year, you’re going to be terrible. You’re gonna be spraying the ball all over the place. If you golf three times a week, you’re gonna be ripping the ball down the fairway. Well, same thing with VA loans, like 95% of loan officers in this country do fewer than like, two VA loans a year, right? And so they’re not going to be very good. They’re not going to be very competent at them. And you may still get the 18 holes done, but it might be a miserable time. You go to somebody that does you know, that specializes, that truly specializes in VA, not somebody that just dabbles in it, but they’re going to know all the rules. They’re going to know all the nuances. It’s going to keep you out of trouble. Like as a loan officer, I’m here to steer people away from places that could potentially be trouble or cause issues in the transaction, and to coach people in the right direction to where it’s going to get done smoothly and efficiently.
Joey Romero  So, what is this certificate of eligibility?
Patton Gade  Well, that’s simply the paper that you get from the VA that says, Yes, you are eligible for a VA loan.
Joey Romero  So, that’s really got to start?
Patton Gade  That is literally the first thing, the very first thing I do when I talk to somebody, is like, okay, let’s pull your certificate. You know, especially when they’re like, ‘Hey, I don’t know if I’m for sure, eligible. You know, I was in for a period of time. I got out because I, you know, I hurt my shoulder,’ you know, whatever it is, or, ‘Hey, I was in the guard for but I don’t know if I served long enough.’ I’m like, Alright, let’s jump on the VA website. Takes me 30 seconds type in your information, boom. You know, 90% of the time I get the certificate of eligibility pulls up right there, and I go, okay, and it shows me whether you’ve used a VA loan in the past. Shows me if you have a current VA loan active. It shows me if you have VA disability or not. It shows me all those different types of things. Shows me what service you were in, like, gives me a lot of information that I can use then to go, ‘Yes, you are eligible to use a VA loan,’ or maybe no, you don’t have eligibility left anymore because of, you know, whether you had a foreclosure in the past or, you know, but yeah. Even if you had a foreclosure, you may still be eligible for another VA loan. It just depends on how much, what the value of that foreclosure was. And so, there’s some rules there.
Joey Romero  Sure. And so, what is the VA loan limit? Is there a VA loan limit?
Patton Gade  So, the VA loan limit, so if you don’t have any entitlement currently used, so you don’t have a VA loan out, you’ve never lost any entitlement for a foreclosure or short sale or something like that. There is no VA loan limit. As a matter of fact, we’ve closed loans, you know, four plus million with no down payment whatsoever. So, that’s and that’s a recent change. So, that changed January of 2020. There was a bill signed by Trump, The Blue Water Navy Act. It had to do with a bunch of stuff, but one of the things that was in it was removing the VA loan limits. So, the VA will guarantee any loan of any size, as long as you have the eligibility, as long as you can afford that payment. So, it opened the door for people that are maybe higher net worth, they’re buying these, you know, more expensive houses, and opened the door for them to use their VA loan benefits in a big way.
Joey Romero  Now, you touched on a little bit where, you know, there’s been a lot of changes, a lot of, you know, good changes that have come through. How has technology changed your ability to to write these loans?
Patton Gade  You know what? There are a lot of people that think that, like AI right now, is it changing the industry? You know for sure, it is. And it’s maybe changing a lot of the underwriting and processing of loans.
Joey Romero  I was just talking about, like you’re talking about, hey, let’s just jump on the website and check your eligibility. I’m sure that that process wasn’t…
Patton Gade  Yeah, probably 20, 30, years ago, like that didn’t exist. So certainly it’s. Certainly. I mean, you know, I have access to almost everything I need within minutes. And frankly, if you and I are talking and you’re going to do a loan like heck, you can text me or email your me, your pay stubs and W-2s in a matter of seconds, probably. And so, you know, that’s made it a lot easier. You know, 30 years ago, people were faxing stuff back and forth and, you know, printing out a credit report and all that stuff like it really is much easier at this point the best.
Joey Romero  All right, everybody that’s going to do it for this week’s episode of The Norris Group Real Estate Podcast with Patton Gade. Please tune in next week for part two.
Narrator  For more information on hard money loans, trust deed investing, and upcoming events with The Norris group. Check out thenorrisgroup.com. For more information on passive investing through the DBL Capital Real Estate Investment Fund, please visit dblapital.com.
Joey Romero  The Norris Group originates and services loans in California and Florida under California DRE license 01219911. Florida mortgage lender license 1577 and NMLS license 1623669. For more information on hard money lending go to thenorrisgroup.com and click the hard money tab.