In 1993, Chappie Sartino set out to begin flipping homes and ended up starting a career in mortgage lending instead. He and a friend had turned to Sartino’s father, who ran a small mortgage brokerage in Sarasota, Florida, for an education on home financing, and as interest rates fell, the pair quickly found themselves assisting others with their mortgage needs. “Soon, we were spending the majority of our time helping people refinance or buy homes and virtually no time flipping homes!” he remembers.

Fast-forward to today, and Sartino is a seasoned mortgage professional with nearly three decades of home financing experience. He is a vice president of residential lending at Draper and Kramer Mortgage’s downtown Chicago branch, where he is a member of the lender’s President’s Club for top-producing mortgage originators and boasts a 99% customer satisfaction rating.

Sartino’s philosophy is to match each client with the loan that suits their short- and long-term goals. “People will often call and tell me that they want a specific product or method for a purchase or refinance,” he says. “Sometimes that may be the best solution, but oftentimes there is a better strategy, so I ask many additional questions to fully understand their scenario and recommend what I believe is the right solution.”

In 2021, Sartino’s proudest achievements were his many individual success stories of serving borrowers. These include helping a father with a complex scenario pass the family home on to his daughter, working with a couple to purchase their dream Florida condo in a red-hot market and assisting a first-time homebuyer on closing his first purchase after losing out on multiple properties.

As the housing market continues to evolve, Sartino is looking forward to expanding and strengthening his partnerships with other industry professionals. “This can be a very challenging business,” he says. “But getting the opportunity to work with true professionals that are great partners makes it so much more rewarding!”