# How a Coastal Carolina Team Is Building the Next Generation of Mortgage Lending
_Published: 2026-09-08T10:00:00.000-04:00_

See how Garden City Mortgage built a mobile-first, referral-driven business on nCino and became a top-producing branch in eight months.

_Every Mortgage Matters' Garden City Mortgage branch is proof that speed, technology, and a focus on people don't have to be at odds._

Drew Blakely founded [Garden City Mortgage](https://gardencitymtg.com/) in Wilmington, North Carolina, combining a meaningful vision and a focus on people, underscored by a strong technology platform.

“It was back in 2023 that I began to have this dream of creating something that really changes our coastal community,” Blakely said.

Blakely is three years into his origination career and now serves as Senior Vice President of Sales at Garden City Mortgage, one of seven brands under Every Mortgage Matters (EMM). Founded in 2022, EMM is an independent mortgage bank with retail, consumer-direct, and wholesale operations and branches spanning from Florida up the East Coast and as far inland as Minnesota. With a team of close to 100 originators, the company is on pace to close $4 billion in volume this year, up from roughly $3 billion in 2025.

In just eight months, Blakely’s team has become EMM's top-producing branch, using nCino Mortgage to run a mobile-first, referral-driven business built almost entirely on purchase loans.

## **Young Team, Modern Tools**

EMM gives originators like Blakely room to build their own brand rather than folding every loan officer into one corporate identity.

"We are really focused on the Drews of the world," said Brad Miller, Chief Strategy Officer at EMM. "It's not about the name on the door anymore. It's about the person behind it and what they're doing to get the business and retain it."

That focus has paid off. The average tenure across EMM is 6.6 years, well above the industry norm of between two and three years.

Garden City Mortgage runs lean, with Blakely, three full-time operations staff, and seven loan officers, most in their mid-20s to mid-30s. More than 95% of their business is purchase, built almost entirely on referrals from a tight local real estate agent network.

For a team that's rarely behind a desk, staying efficient means staying mobile.

"The majority of my sales people are out and about all day," Blakely said. The mobile-first mindset extends to his own workflow. Loan officers use nCino Mortgage to send pre-approvals, check application status, and confirm new files were submitted, all from their phones.

Blakely sees that same generational shift on the borrower side. That morning, he'd helped close a loan for a client who had just turned 21, one of many young, first-time buyers his team works with.

"A lot of these folks don't really want to call you, and they don't necessarily even want to email you," Blakely said. "But if you ping them with a task on an app, they are more responsive."

## Why Ease of Use Wins

For Blakely, technology adoption starts with one question: Will the sales team actually use it? That's why he considers a user-friendly interface just as important as the efficiencies a new technology can deliver.

Once Garden City Mortgage implemented nCino Mortgage, Blakely's team immediately started sharing application links, checking for new submissions, and sending pre-approval letters. Blakely sees that emphasis on intuitive technology as a reflection of where the industry is headed. For a team like Blakely’s planning to be in the industry another 20 or 25 years, staying ahead of the curve isn't optional.

"If you are a loan officer under the age of 30 and you are not using the best mortgage tech and AI every day, you will fall behind,” he said.

EMM brings that same mindset to how it verifies loan files, leaning on nCino Mortgage's configurability to choose its own approach: verifying assets upfront and automating income and employment verification as a task after initial disclosures. On top of that flexibility, the company is rolling out nCino Doc VOI, which steps in when direct-source income verification isn't available, automating what would otherwise be a manual review of pay stubs and W-2s.

This kind of flexibility lets EMM's staff build workflows that fit the way they work, and for Miller, that's where success really shows up.

"Success, in our mind, is the entire experience, not only for our external customers but for our internal customers as well," Miller said. "Our processors are happy, our underwriters are happy, our closers are happy.”

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