Lan Plunkett and Melissa Benton know one thing about you: you're worth more than you think.
Another Relaxing weekend unfolds in Ocala. While some of us contemplate golf as we shuffle around cradling our first mug of Java, Lan Plunkett, 
Melissa Benton and Hope Meffert are busy padding through the dew around a villa in Laurel Woods.
By noon, another high-end home will be signed, sealed and delivered to its new owner. And, with it, there will be a new friend of a unique mother-and-daughter enterprise that has been touching lives all over Florida, and Marion County in particular.
What Lan Plunkett and daughter Melissa Benton do appears simple. They help you buy a home, or refinance an existing one to generate more money, or just to pay off bills.
Conventionally, if we want a mortgage or want to refinance our property we automatically think "bank," gather all our documents, hope we measure up the bank's standards, and turn over our future to the creditor. After all, there is sound reason for this feeling, considering that mortgage is derived from the French - mort (death) and gage (duel).
Lan and Melissa offer the alternative, as in alternative financing.
What they do, through their United Mortgage Service in Ocala, is to work with more than 20 different banks and financial institutions to find the best financing or
refinancing for you, for whatever your reason — to buy a home, investment property, acreage, a farm, home improvement, or to get a low-interest loan to pay off high-interest debts.
And it's not just about financing high-end properties to “qualified” buyers, either. If you have a poor or blemished credit record and not much to your name, read on.
Their operating philosophy is this: No matter who you are, you’re worth a lot more than you think you are.
Working Smart
Realtor Associate Scott Hash, of Magnolia Southern 
Properties in Anthony, tells of youthful clients, two brothers, ages 19 and 21, who had nothing more in their assets column than the American Dream — to own a home and property. Would a teen-ager “qualify”? Who would lend him thousands of dollars?
“Melissa and Lan did,” says Hash. “It’s a case of two young guys who got a break because somebody cared, took the time and didn't turn them away. Today, one of them owns two double-wides on 10 acres, and the other a double-wide on three acres.”
At the other end of the economic spectrum, Jack and Sara Morrison, who own Morrison Electric, Inc, in Ft. Myers, could have walked into any bank, but Suzanne Thomas, of Roberts Real Estate introduced them to United Mortgage - and they have been repeat clients ever since with five transactions in four years. Buying a home in Ocala's Historic District was followed by a refinance, then two condos in Ft. Myers, and now a home in pristine Forest Park Estate. “If we ever move again, we'll be with Lan,” says Sara Morrison. “We’re customers for life.”
What a mother and daughter do may sound simple, but it's not easy.
It takes knowledge, a genuine interest in helping someone, “and going that extra hundred miles down every avenue,” says Hope Meffert, broker-associate at ReMax Premier Realty in Ocala. “Whether they're dealing with a first-home buyer with credit blemishes
or a multi-million dollar loan, Lan and Melissa have tremendous perseverance and tenacity in finding what’s best for the customer. They work with a wide network of institutions and have a network of appraisers. You aren't sitting around waiting for an appraiser to show up , or until a bank officer gets to your file.”
Melissa Benton - who has a bachelor's degree in finance from The University of Central Florida, and is vice-president and a partner with her mother at United Mortgage - says: “We offer new facets in financing- and cover a wide customer base: first-time home buyers, home buyers who don't have much money. We've done 100% financing, no-document loans for the self-employed and financed people with poor or blemished credit.”
If the Dream is big enough, the facts don’t count
“Financial mortgage doctors? Maybe,” says Melinda Singletin, 26, stay-at-home mother of six, whose 30-year-old husband works two full-time jobs. She calls Lan and Melissa “miracle workers.”
“We didn’t even dream we’d be able to own our home, so there was no point in even thinking about it,” she recalls. “Melissa asked me what assets we had and I told her twp Chevy Novas worth about $50 each, I had a bad credit record, and my husband (John) had no credit whatsoever. We were paying about $700 a month in rent and John was going from one job directly to his second eight-hour job.”
“Who were we?” she asks, her voice breaking. “What right did we have to dream?”
However, Melissa Benton picked up on three invisible threads: John's absence of credit, and his ability to work hard and pay the rent. “They told us what we needed to do,” says Singleton. They guided us and encouraged us, and told us our dreams could come true. But Lan and Melissa believed in us and our dream more than we believed in ourselves.
“Finally, they made us believe in the dream they had for us,” and with $1,800 down, they moved into their own home in Silver Springs Shores and their mortgage is $200 less than the monthly rent.
Across town, Ellen Tarrant, a 20-year veteran of the real estate industry, and manager and part-owner of Keller Williams cornerstone Realty, tells of United Mortgage's getting her 20-year-old son an FHA loan and putting him into a $53,000 home with a mortgage payment of less than $500. “He would have had to pay a lot more to come up with the deposit money for a $600-a-month apartment.”
Why It Works
The reason Lan Plunkett shares her dream is because she is living hers.
“I was new in America and read one of those small ads in a newspaper in Miami about making a lot of money working from home, and I believed it,” she recalls, laughing. “I believed it would work if I worked hard, and so it worked.” Her hard work and her dream shot her up the corporate ladder to production manager at Common Wealth Federal Savings & Loan. When she decided to move to Ocala, Common Wealth Federal Savings & Loan opened an office for her here because they couldn't afford to lose her.
“I remember my mom coming to Ocala, not knowing anyone and working really hard - going door to door with her business card looking for clients,” appreciative daughter Melissa recalls.
Then the S&Ls went belly-up but Lan didn't. An expert in the field with rare people skills, she was snapped up by Mid-State Federal, which evolved into AmSouth Bank, with Lan as vice president in charge of Marion and Citrus counties.
In 1998, Lan decided to strike out on her own. “My mother had tremendous product knowledge and was known and loved in the community,” recalls Melissa, who was inspired by her mother and opted for a finance degree at the University of Central Florida.
“If anyone has a dream and believes in themselves, they can achieve anything,” Lan says modestly.
Lan's dream and determination had to be rekindled when the first chapter of her life - as a young woman from a privileged family in Hue - was closed by family tragedy following the Communist takeover of Vietnam.
“Dreams are free,” she adds philosophically, her eyes lighting up her face. “I see so many people here who are successful because they followed their dreams. And so many who won't go very far because they are afraid to dream.”
Her new business hit the ground running as a number of real estate agents, builders and clients who had dealt with her when she had worked at the banks, followed her. “United Mortgage” is a name I picked because even I can pronounce it,” she says with a laugh. “And now it makes sense because my daughter has united with me as a partner.”
Sisters Candace and Donise Jones have joined the United team as office managers and bring what Lan calls “the promise of youth” to a business that can use a lot more dreamers.
What kills dreams faster than anything else is people don't realize what they're worth, Lan says. “If people can just change the way they think - from ‘I can't afford it’ to ‘how can I afford it’ - you will see miracles. That’s the way we operate: ‘Let’s see how we can get this done - then we go out and get it done.”
Several veteran real estate agents polled say each bank or traditional lending institution tends to operate under its own parameters, and because of time-cost constraints generally does not invest the time or effort working with someone who has a blemished credit or brief employment record. There are minimum qualifications and targets to be met.
Thus, turned down by banks, many people discard or delay their dream of owning a home, she adds. They don't realize they are worth more and that a good mortgage broker can make it work for you.
“One of my clients was 19 years old and was a welder,” recalls Hope Meffert. “The company he worked for moved out of town and he got another job at a lower salary. The banks wouldn't see him, but Melissa did - and he's a homeowner now.”
Suzanne Thomas, at Roberts Real Estate, who has been bringing clients to Lan since years before she started United Mortgage, cautions that not all mortgage brokers are alike, and there’s none like Lan.
‘What I know is this: She’s very knowledgeable, professional, and prompt. There’s no waiting around for an appraiser or waiting around for more documents. And you know within days - if not immediately - if you qualify for the loan. She gets things right the first time around.”
More than all that is the uncanny personalized service, Thomas adds. She recalls Lan staying awake and sending faxes at 2 a.m. to a client in Europe because of the time difference.
Helping you know your worth…and potential
Tarrant, of Keller Williams, says in the 20 years she has been in the business, she hasn’t found anyone who can analyze your assets and land a mortgage or work an investor loan as well as Lan and Melissa can. “And like mother, like daughter - they're sharp and hard-working and straightforward.”
Tarrant adds they have greatly increased the awareness and possibilities of using your equity to increase your income. Tarrant, herself, is working with Melissa to leverage the equity in her own property to buy
investment property. And given the present conditions of attractive interest rates and rapid area growth - the time is ripe to buy or refinance.
No matter which end of the social or economic spectrum, it pays to walk in and find out how you can make money work for you.
Lan and Melissa attribute their phenomenal success to knowledge, hard work and honesty.
“We think if people say we provide excellent customer service, that’s because all our customers have become personal friends, and because we think we never lose sight of the people who have made us what we are today.”
There’s a lot more than that, protests Melinda Singleton. “My family owes our present and future to them. I was a young, inexperienced mother just out of high school,” she confides. “I kept getting credit cards in the mail and I messed up my credit. There were bills and debts, six children and a husband who had to work 16 hours a day to pay the debts.
“Instead of dreams, we had nightmares. But Lan and Melissa made us believe in ourselves again,” she says, trying to hold back her emotions.
“When someone opens their hearts and their arms and believes in you for months, it’s hard not to start dreaming again,” she adds. “They cared so much about us and they made it happen for us, for our six little children. In our book, Lan and Melissa will always be our angels.
