“If you’re not focused in the non-agency space, then you’re leaving potentially one out of every four, one out of every five deals on the table”
Tom Davis, Deephaven
“Most brokers aren’t offering these solutions simply because they aren’t familiar with the products”
Bryant Schouest,
Southern Mortgage Corp
“I have a HELOC product where I can offer $1 million. We had the opportunity to turn a $400,000 or $500,000 second HELOC into a million-dollar HELOC”
Diego Londono, LendingSpot
“It’s knowledge and comfort level with the programs. It builds confidence as you close them”
Paul Schouest,
Southern Mortgage Corp
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The equity deal hiding behind the first mortgage
Deephaven Mortgage says brokers are finding volume in clients who need capital but have no reason to refinance
Read on
Mark Hammond
Deephaven
Matt Rohl
Deephaven
Tom Davis
Deephaven
Diego Londono
LendingSpot
Industry experts
Cash-out refinance volume has been effectively dead for two years, but the demand behind it never went away. Homeowners locked into 2020 and 2021 rates still need capital, for renovations, for debt consolidation, for funding a business, and increasingly they’re getting it through second liens instead of touching their first mortgage at all.
Non-QM lender Deephaven Mortgage puts equity products at roughly $150 billion of origination volume this year, part of a non-agency market it sizes at close to $400 billion overall.
Mortgage Professional America recently sat down with a group of people building real volume around that gap between what borrowers need and what conventional lending offers them: Tom Davis, chief sales officer at Deephaven Mortgage; Matt Rohl, Deephaven's vice president of strategic initiatives; Mark Hammond, a wholesale account executive at Deephaven; Paul Schouest and Bryant Schouest of Southern Mortgage Corp in Atlanta, two brokers who’ve made equity and non-QM lending a part of their pipeline; and Diego Londono, managing partner at LendingSpot in South Florida.
Deephaven Mortgage has been a leader in non-QM since our origin in 2012. Our longevity and strength in the non-QM space has allowed a significant number of borrowers to achieve homeownership who otherwise would not have under traditional requirements. Deephaven champions mortgage borrowers whose entrepreneurial drive and determination are often why they cannot qualify for a traditional loan.
Their non-QM portfolio includes DSCR, Bank Statement, HELOANs, first and second lien HELOC, and non-prime solutions. As experts and educators in the non-QM sector, Deephaven offers extensive training to their mortgage partners.
Mark Hammond is a wholesale account executive at Deephaven Mortgage. Hammond is a 30-year veteran of the mortgage banking industry, and his experience guides him through his work today. By combining positive energy, strategic vision, and leadership with tactical execution built on the street, Hammond is committed to helping his clients achieve their goals and long-term success.
Deephaven
Mark Hammond
Matt Rohl is a seasoned mortgage industry leader with more than 30 years of experience driving innovation across retail, correspondent, and wholesale lending channels. As a key leader at Deephaven Mortgage, he plays an integral role in advancing second-lien lending solutions and digital transformation initiatives, including the development and national rollout of the Equity Advantage HELOC platform. Rohl collaborates closely with lenders, brokers, and internal teams to improve operational efficiency, drive product adoption, and strengthen customer retention. Recognized for aligning sales strategy with operational excellence, he helps financial institutions unlock growth opportunities while delivering exceptional borrower experiences.
Deephaven
Matt Rohl
Tom Davis is the chief sales officer at Deephaven Mortgage. Davis manages Deephaven’s wholesale, non-delegated, and correspondent sales teams. As an extensively trained mortgage professional, Davis brings more than 20 years of experience helping brokers and lending partners with their non-agency/non-QM and agency needs.
Deephaven
Tom Davis
With nearly 30 years of experience in residential lending, Diego Londono helps clients navigate the mortgage process with clarity, confidence, and care. From conventional and government-backed loans to specialized programs for foreign nationals and self-employed borrowers, Londono offers tailored solutions that align with each client’s financial goals.
LendingSpot
Diego Londono
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Published Sep 21, 2026
Paul Schouest
Southern Mortgage Corp.
Bryant Schouest
Southern Mortgage Corp.
Paul Schouest is a seasoned mortgage professional and loan officer with Southern Mortgage Corp, serving clients across Georgia and multiple states since 1992. A graduate of Louisiana State University with a degree in finance, Paul began his career with Citibank in Zurich and Amsterdam before establishing his mortgage brokerage business in Atlanta. Known for his personalized approach, he helps homebuyers and homeowners navigate the mortgage process with confidence and ease. Working alongside his family, Paul is committed to building lasting relationships through trust, communication, and tailored lending solutions. He also owns Southern Mortgage Commercial LLC, serving commercial borrowers nationwide.
Southern Mortgage Corp
Paul Schouest
As a dedicated mortgage broker, Bryant Schouest combines local expertise, strong community ties, and a client-first approach to help individuals and families achieve their homeownership goals throughout Georgia, Louisiana, Florida, South Carolina, Tennessee, and North Carolina.
Bryant proudly joined his family’s mortgage business as a mortgage loan officer in 2024. From an early age, Bryant’s competitive spirit was evident through athletics, playing for Buckhead Baseball and the Northside Youth Organization. He further developed his leadership and discipline at The Lovett School, Riverside Military Academy, and Kennesaw State University (KSU).
Southern Mortgage Corp.
Bryant Schouest
“Mortgage brokers generally do not earn continuing revenue from a loan once it closes. Every month you’re starting over again with a new pipeline”
Mark Hammond, Deephaven
“An automated valuation works fine for a borrower who bought recently, but not for someone who’s spent 15 years renovating a house the model has never seen updated”
Matt Rohl,
Deephaven
Why brokers are leaving deals on the table Brokers spent years viewing home equity mainly through cash-out refinances. When rates rose sharply, that strategy stopped making sense. A cash-out refinance means restructuring the entire loan at today’s rate to access a portion of the home’s value. A second lien, whether a HELOC or a closed-end second, leaves the original loan and its rate completely untouched, and prices only the new money being borrowed.
For a homeowner sitting on a 2.875 percent first mortgage, the attraction is straightforward; the original loan stays where it is.
But many originators did not replace the downturn of cash-out refinances with anything else, leaving a potentially lucrative stream untapped.
Davis put a number on the opportunity brokers are ignoring.
“If you’re not focused in the non-agency space, then you’re leaving potentially one out of every four, one out of every five deals on the table,” he said.
According to Deephaven’s internal market analysis, data on the first quarter of 2026 showed $47 billion in equity extraction industrywide. More than half of this − $25 billion − was done through second liens rather than cash-out refinances.
In South Florida, Londono has watched this play out, where years of property appreciation have left some borrowers with very large amounts of equity behind first mortgages they have little reason to disturb.
“Some of the seconds I’m doing today would have been first mortgages five years ago,” he said. “We’re doing $400,000 or $500,000 seconds, even $600,000.”
Borrowers are accepting rates in the 8 percent range because the alternative is repricing a much larger balance.
“They love their 2.875 percent rate,” Londono said. “They don’t want to touch their first mortgage.”
Consumers who might reflexively reject a much higher rate on paper stopped resisting once they realized that rate
wasn’t replacing their existing one, it was simply the cost of new capital they didn’t have access to otherwise.
“You would think that the consumer is going to balk at an 8.5 percent interest rate,” Londono said. “They don’t. They accept it. They love it.” The rate isn’t competing against their locked in low first mortgage rate. It’s competing against not having the money at all.
At LendingSpot, equity products now account for roughly 15 to 20 percent of the business, according to Londono. He expects that share to grow. Low-rate borrowers are one part of the equity opportunity. At the other end are homeowners with no first mortgage to protect at all.
Davis also pointed to the roughly 40 percent of Americans who own their homes free and clear. No existing mortgage means no refinance opportunity, which in a lot of originators’ minds means no reason to ever pick up the phone. But many in that cohort are older homeowners sitting on decades of accumulated equity in properties that now need significant work.
Davis pointed out that the average home in the United States is 40 to 50 years old, and homes that age tend to need real money spent on them: new roofs, extra square footage via additions, replacement of mechanical systems well past their expected life. Renovation spending nationally is projected to hit roughly $600 billion in 2026, and a meaningful share of that is going to come from those homeowners who have no mortgage to leverage in a conventional sense but do have a house worth far more than what they paid for it. Davis sees those renovation needs as another reason brokers should be looking at borrowers who own their homes outright.
Not every missed borrower looks like that, though. There’s another client profile on the rise: people who have plenty of equity and a straightforward mortgage but the kind of income that doesn’t show up cleanly on a tax return.
The borrower a tax return doesn’t explain and brokers don’t capture Property equity is only one reason a conventional loan can miss the borrower. Income documentation is another.
Self-employed borrowers are a common example. Tax returns can show considerably less income than the cash actually moving through the business.
Londono closed a loan that illustrates the gap well. He worked with a client in Parkland, Florida, who was a seawall contractor. The man, who had a $5 million house and a $2 million first mortgage, called needing capital for his business. His bank had already turned him down.
The client first floated a more conservative number, but Londondo discussed taking a larger line so he would not have to return for additional financing later. “I have a HELOC product where I can offer $1 million,” he told him. “We had the opportunity to turn a $400,000 or $500,000 second HELOC into a million-dollar HELOC.”
The underwriting ran on bank statements instead of tax returns. The client’s business was depositing $300,000 to $400,000 a month, far more than his returns showed.
“Without this product, I don’t know if we would have been able to get it done anywhere else,” Londono said.
Sometimes those borrowers come from places brokers might not expect, including the banks themselves. Paul Schouest has found that private bankers in Atlanta will refer clients they want to keep but cannot finance within their own lending guidelines. Because his brokerage is not competing for the client’s deposits or wider banking relationship, the bank can send the mortgage business elsewhere without giving up the client.
One referral needed roughly $500,000 to start a business and owned three rental properties free and clear, with a small loan against a fourth. Paul pulled cash out across all three using a bank statement loan.
“The bank was happy. We took care of the client,” he said. That single relationship has since produced ongoing referrals for DSCR loans, bank statement loans, and profit-and-loss loans.
“It’s knowledge and comfort level with the programs,” Paul said. “It builds confidence as you close them.”
Knowing which borrowers qualify, the panel agrees, is only useful if a broker knows how to find them.
The old refinance database still has value Brokers also do not have to look far for potential equity business. Rohl argues much of it is already sitting in the same databases loan officers used during the refinance boom.
Back then, originators tracked appreciation and loan balances to identify borrowers who might have room for a cash-out refinance. That information has not become obsolete just because the refinance itself has.
“The same marketing strategy can be used on HELOCs and closed-end seconds to replace that cash-out refinancing,” Rohl said.
Bryant Schouest sees that as particularly useful with those
clients whose existing mortgage rate gives them no reason to discuss a refinance. Instead of another conversation about waiting for rates to fall, the broker can talk about a need the client has now.
Londono recently tested that idea with an email campaign. His firm sent clients a calculator that let them enter the amount of equity they wanted to access and see an estimated payment before speaking to a loan officer.
Borrowers began calling about $50,000, $100,000 and $200,000 draws, often to deal with debts they had been reluctant to discuss directly.
“People can be uncomfortable saying they’re in debt,” Londono said. “It’s a very personal subject.”
Seeing the payment privately gave borrowers a way into a conversation they may not have wanted to initiate cold.
There is a retention issue here too. Davis said borrowers who need equity and cannot get it through their broker will often end up with their mortgage servicer. Once the servicer originates the second lien, it has another relationship with the client and another chance to capture the first mortgage when refinancing eventually makes sense again.
Hammond emphasized, “Mortgage brokers generally do not earn continuing revenue from a loan once it closes. Every month you’re starting over again with a new pipeline.”
The same flexibility applies to the property, not just the income. Rohl said, “An automated valuation works fine for a borrower who bought recently, but not for someone who’s spent 15 years renovating a house the model has never seen updated.” In those cases, Deephaven will order a full appraisal instead, so the borrower can access what the home is actually worth rather than a conservative desktop estimate.
That range of files is also why Davis has stopped describing Deephaven internally as simply a non-QM lender. Its lineup now extends from non-QM mortgages into closed-end seconds and HELOCs, including lines up to $1 million, DSCR lending, first-lien HELOCs, and real estate transition loans of up to $15 million for fix-and-flip, bridge, and ground-up construction. Davis said a broker trying to assemble comparable coverage elsewhere could end up approved with three or four different investors.
For Paul Schouest, though, having the products available is only part of it, “It’s important to have a good account rep to work with,” he said. “The products are out there, but the account rep can help you put the deals together.”
As the product set expands, the harder part is knowing which one actually fits the borrower. Bank-statement loans, DSCR deals, and more complex HELOCs still depend on the broker and lender understanding how to put the file together.
What brokers still need to learn The borrowers discussed throughout the conversation are not all being pushed into non-agency lending for the same reason. Some are protecting first mortgages they have no interest in refinancing. Others own their homes outright. Self-employed borrowers may have the cash flow to support a loan without showing the income a conventional lender wants to see on a tax return.
What they have in common is that the usual first-mortgage conversation does not get very far.
Many of them are also already sitting in a broker’s database. Originators spent years tracking appreciation and loan balances to identify refinance opportunities. Rohl’s point is that the same information can now be used to find borrowers who may be candidates for a HELOC or second lien instead.
Davis expects the non-agency market to grow 30 to 35 percent year over year, but he sees loan officer adoption as one of the biggest variables in how much of that business actually reaches the wholesale channel.
There may be more files moving outside the agencies as well. Davis pointed to tighter treatment of certain investor, second-home, and condo loans and said he does not expect the agencies to reverse course quickly. “They’re not going to budge on that stuff,” he said. “So guess what? Non-agency is going to fill that gap.”
But the more immediate issue for brokers is less about
predicting where rates or agency guidelines go next than knowing what to do with the borrowers already in front of them.
That comes back to the point Paul and Bryant Schouest both made about familiarity. A broker has to recognize when a bank-statement loan makes more sense than a conventional income calculation, when an investor can qualify on DSCR, when a second lien preserves a valuable first mortgage, and when an automated process needs to give way to a fuller review.
“Most brokers aren’t offering these solutions simply because they aren’t familiar with the products,” Bryant said.
For brokers who spent the refinance boom learning how to find homeowners with equity, the prospecting piece is already familiar. What has changed is the range of loans they need to know how to put behind that conversation.
Borrowers beyond the refinance
Low-rate homeowners protecting their first mortgage
Free-and-clear owners with equity to access
Self-employed borrowers better suited to bank statements
Investors qualifying through DSCR
Where the next deal can come from
Past-client databases
Private-bank referrals
Existing investor relationships
Account reps who know how
to structure complex files
