Alex Filin
VP of Residential Lending
PERL Mortgage
In 2015, Alex Filin made a leap of faith, leaving a successful and award-winning career with New York Life to join PERL Mortgage as a Mortgage Banker. Now, just two years after getting his start in the real estate industry, Filin is already making a big impact at PERL, being ranked in their Top 25 of Mortgage Loan Officers for 2017 up to this point. This achievement was made possible in large part due to Filin’s impressive March, in which he was able to help 11 different families achieve their dreams of home ownership — an incredible feat, and one that Filin counts as one of his greatest professional accomplishments.
Why leave a successful career to try out real estate? Filin says that he was motivated by the possibility of helping people achieve their dream of home ownership. He specializes in helping first-time buyers, especially individuals or families moving from condos to single-family homes as well as growing families looking to move from the city to the suburbs. First-time buyers present unique challenges, of course, but for Filin the rewards far outweigh them, and continually motivate and inspire him. Because first-time buyers tend to have a lot of questions and anxieties about buying a home, Filin considers himself an educator, someone whose job it is to guide people through the ins-and-outs of what, for many people, can be a nerve-wracking process. “I focus on education, being honest and straightforward, and not being ‘salesy,’” Filin tells us. This direct, honest approach is what Filin considers the key to his success thus far.
Born in Riga, Latvia, part of the former USSR, Filin and his family moved to Skokie when he was six, and he remains fluent in Russian. Today, Filin is happily married to his beautiful wife Jennifer and he and his wife just had their first child, Piper Grace, on May 23! A former All-State high school athlete in multiple sports and college football player for Illinois State University, Filin also enjoys staying active by playing basketball and golf.