HousingWire Mortgage Rankings: The playbook for the top-producing LOs of 2025

Jarret Coleman is not on social media posting about interest rate moves or explaining mortgage concepts to the public — a model successfully adopted by some of his peers. Instead, the Greenwich, Connecticut-based loan officer for US Bank takes a more traditional approach to his business.

“I started in 2006 as an assistant to a loan officer, and they basically taught me the value of having real estate agents as referral partners,” Coleman said in an interview with HousingWire.

“As time moved on, that list of agents grew as I continued to expand my outreach and as things moved toward the electronic nature that we’re in today. I communicate with over 1,000 different agents now within my sphere of influence, and certainly I don’t win every deal, but I get enough referrals to grow and maintain my business.”

Coleman joined the industry “when everyone was leaving,” he said. Having just graduated from college, he didn’t have major bills — a relevant advantage in a commission-based industry. Despite the challenging environment, he adopted a simple mentality: “If it’s not broken, why change it?”

The approach has worked well. An introvert who originally went to school to become a meteorologist, Coleman ended up in the mortgage industry, eventually speaking in front of thousands of people to occupy a top position.

In 2025, he was the U.S. mortgage professional who generated the highest total dollar volume of loans at $644.5 million across 606 units, according to the inaugural edition of the HousingWire Mortgage Rankings. The position reflects the full scope of an originator’s production across all loan types and programs, based on mortgage data sourced through InGenius.

Last year was a difficult one, even for the top mortgage originators, as 2025 was characterized by still-high mortgage rates (which went from roughly 7% at the start of the year to 6.2% in December). Meanwhile, persistent housing shortages continued to affect markets across the country.

For the industry’s top-producing LOs, success ultimately hinged on relying on trusted partners, educating borrowers and investing in the quality of their service.

How to differentiate yourself

Shant Banosian ranked No. 2 on HousingWire’s top volume list, originating $638.5 million across 901 units. Based in Waltham, Massachusetts, he divides his time between origination and his role as president of Chicago-based lender Rate. Banosian said that his broader team generated an even higher volume last year, reaching the $1 billion mark.

“I’ve been fortunate and blessed to be surrounded by incredible team members who especially have stepped up a lot more over the course of last year, because I took on the added responsibility of being president of Rate,” Banosian said in an interview with HousingWire Editor in Chief Sarah Wheeler.

“If one of my team members runs as a point person for the application of the client, we just recognize them as the loan officer on the transaction.”

To reach the top ranking of originators, Banosian said the secret is simple: “service” and finding ways to stand out from the hundreds or thousands of competing LOs in a given market.

“Everybody has rates, has access to great products, but how do you differentiate yourself? We look at the obstacles and challenges that our clients and our partners are facing, specifically our real estate agent partners and obviously our end-user consumers,” Banosian said.

​​Banosian also invests heavily in educating partners and borrowers, which he said attracts the right kind of clients.

“If I provide enough information, it motivates people into action,” he added. “Our goal is to do business in every kind of market and really show up for people as they need us.”

While there’s a place for technology — such as automated alerts to notify originators of refinance opportunities — Banosian noted that LOs “can’t automate relationships.” The best originators, in his opinion, consistently focus on the fundamentals: picking up the phone, writing effective emails, building a strong social media presence and tracking clients’ life events.

“The average consumer, once they enter their homeownership journey, will take out 11 or 12 mortgages throughout the course of their lifetime,” Banosian said. “Most loan officers are lucky if they capture one or two of those. My mission is to capture 10, 11 or 12 of those.”

In terms of refinances, Banosian reached $154.8 million in volume last year, compared to $481.9 million in purchase volume, according to the HousingWire Mortgage Rankings.

Coleman’s approach

Coleman, meanwhile, maintained a high share of his business from refinances last year — producing $334 million in refi volume compared to $302 million in purchase volume. The reason? A high volume of purchase loans made in 2022 and 2023 when rates were rising very quickly, which provided the chance to renegotiate with small changes in rates.

“I always found that the key to longevity in this business is to maintain the purchase activity, because refis don’t last forever,” Coleman said.

But there’s a catch: Coleman focuses on high net worth clients, and the larger the loan amount, the less interest savings are needed to have a meaningful impact on a monthly payment. He is an expert in jumbo loans, which sit above the conforming limit of $832,750 for 2026.

Coleman originates many loans within the New York City metro and surrounding areas. Fairfield County, where he is located, was a sleeping county for a decade, from 2010 to 2020, he said. 

“Then, all of a sudden, everything flip-flopped with COVID. No one wanted to be in the city; everyone came roaring back. And we’re still dealing with that now. Demand far outweighs supply,” Coleman said. According to him, $2 million to $4 million homes consistently sell above list price, and he often has to write 10 preapprovals for clients before they actually get an accepted offer.

His clientele largely consists of business professionals buying their first or second home who are on an upward income trajectory.

“They are usually savvy enough so that they’re not necessarily needing the same hand-holding that a brand new first-time homebuyer would need,” he said. “We don’t have to invest nearly as much time to make sure that we’re a right fit for them. If I was dealing solely with first-time homebuyers, it takes much more time and wouldn’t necessarily allow me to operate the same numbers that we were able to do last year, as a rule of thumb.”

So far, Coleman sees 2026 starting off very strong, but it’s the supply issue that he remains concerned about in his market.

“You have a lot of people that want to sell and want to move, but there’s nowhere to move. So they don’t want to list their house until they find the house that they want to move to, and therefore they’re not listing their house. It’s like this revolving circle. I have wrapped my brain around a strategy that might fix this, and I can’t come up with anything.”

Eventually, he noted, people will have to make the decision to list and move if their current home is no longer best for their family.

“We can do as many preapprovals as we can and put them on a drip campaign where we’ll try to communicate and just keep them apprised of what’s going on in real time, and hope that the right house comes and they’re ready to act. But yeah, that’s the best we can do. Time will tell.”