1003s & Ballots – Mortgage broker Mamie Pinder running for Florida School Board

After teaching for 26 years, Mamie Pinder, 64 — currently a mortgage originator — is in her third attempt to win a district seat on the Miami-Dade County School Board of Education.

The retired teacher, also an elected member of the Republican Party of Miami-Dade County Executive Board since 1979, said she ran for mayor of Miami in 1981 primarily to gain exposure and name recognition to prepare for her first School Board campaign the following year. Pinder said she finished fourth of eighth in the mayor race, and did not get the Board seat in 1982, nor when she tried again in 1986, but that hasn’t stopped her.

“I had said I wasn’t going to run for anything anymore,” but twenty years later she finds herself motivated because the county schools “have some severe problems that we’re confronted with,” Pinder said.

The educational system is “the area of politics that my heart has always been in, with the children, because that’s who I was with all of my life — that’s where I have the greatest amount of expertise aside from politics,” she added.

While Pinder has decades of experience in politics and teaching, she has only been in the mortgage industry for the past seven to eight years and says she continues to learn from this field although its something she’s been acquainted with since she was a child.

Pinder said her father bought land under her name when she was 11 years old and that she inherited other real estate purchases from her father by the time she graduated from college. As an absentee owner in some cases and with liens being put on property “because people throw their old TVs and furniture on the land and you can’t clear it off because you don’t live there,” Pinder said she had to learn about the mortgage business at a young age to be able to handle the investments.

“I quite frankly always wanted to become a mortgage broker and I attempted to do that about 20 years ago,” the retired teacher said.

According to Pinder, the mortgage business became more accessible to blacks after a new controller, or regulating official for the industry in the state of Florida, was elected into office about eight years ago. “He opened up a lot of doors. He made an effort to recruit blacks that would like to go out to the mortgage business. So I had that opportunity.”

Although she is currently an originator for Fast Lending Mortgage, her ride to this point has not been free of obstacles.

“I’m not one those wealthy mortgage brokers but I survive from day to day,” she said, with a laugh.

Pinder said she owned a company called Crossroads Mortgage from 1999 to 2001, but ended up having to file for Chapter 13 and just got out of bankruptcy in December 2003.

“I really didn’t know enough also about the mortgage business to go on my own,” she said. “The best thing I could have done at the time, so I could keep a roof over my head, was to declare bankruptcy, and that seemed to work out for me pretty well.”

Pinder also said she needs to learn more about the “more complicated loans” in the market today, since she’s been dealing with refinances throughout most of her mortgage career. “I really like the people well at Fast Lending, where I am, just because of personality, and as a mortgage broker you want to work with people that you can trust, who are going to help you get your business through.”

The active Republican says she plans to continue working as a broker even if she gets elected onto the Board.

“Everyone who works for the Board has another job and the good thing about being in the mortgage business; my hours are my own to plan. This way I can go to the different schools, which is what I really want to do to put in time to help put together programs,” she added.

Programs that can aid “move our children academically to a success. The children here in Miami-Dade County are getting a watered-down education,” Pinder said, adding that some schools lack physical education, music and other art classes. “We keep pouring more money into education and we are getting far less in return.”

Whether the mortgage broker gets the Board seat remains to be seen, but she says she is confident and will take it one step at a time to get there.

Coco Salazar is an assistant editor and staff writer for MortgageDaily.com.