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Getting God into the mortgage business

The owners of Covington Mortgage Group aim to run their company on biblical principles.

By Scott Barancik, Times Staff Writer
Published April 9, 2007

ADVERTISEMENT [Times photo: Mike Pease] Clarence J. Johns. Sr. and his wife Lisa Ross Johns and are using their faith as a marketing tool.

As highway billboards go, this one was an attention-getter.

It wasn't just the arresting yellow-type-on-black-background design. It was the whiplash-inducing message. "Covington Mortgage," it read. "Taking Greed Out, Putting God In!"

Mortgage companies are rarely confused with temples. Even less so today, with foreclosure rates on the rise and a growing number of lenders accused of avarice and fraud. In such circumstances, references to God tend toward the profane.

That became clear to C.J. Johns Sr. and Lisa Ross-Johns shortly after they formed Covington Mortgage Group late last year and put up their first billboard along Interstate 275 South near downtown Tampa. The ad generated dozens of calls, many of them abusive, and not a single new loan.

That's okay, says Johns, 42. The point was to announce the Wesley Chapel business' obedience to God. "I want to avoid coming off as, 'I'm the holy one, and the rest of you brokers are crooks,' " he says. "But there is a certain norm that we've decided not to be a part of."

How does one run a mortgage brokerage in the spirit of Jesus? For Johns and Ross-Johns, high-school sweethearts from Cleveland who met again in southern California years later, it's not about gimmicky marketing, converting customers or running a charity.

"We don't want to do three loans and go out of business," Johns says. "Putting in God" means educating and respecting customers, avoiding predatory loan products, and charging reasonable and transparent fees.

The couple say they haven't charged any borrower more than 0.95 "points," or just less than 1 percent of the loan principal. Same for their broker's fee. They say they don't play the game of advertising interest rates, and don't offer negative amortization loans, which let borrowers temporarily pay very low rates at the cost of increasing the loan's size.

Johns says he hasn't always "walked with Jesus." By the time he met up again with Ross-Johns, an accounting veteran, he had two children, held a variety of jobs and made a vain attempt to launch a singing career. He says he finally found God after contracting valley fever, a disease that collapsed his lungs, invaded his spine and left the couple with hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills they cured through a Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing.

Several years ago, Johns says, God gave him a new assignment: move to Florida, where his mother and two sisters live, and form a real estate business that runs on biblical principles.

Johns says he was looking at houses when he came upon a New Tampa development called Covington Estates and mistakenly thought it said "King's Covenant." He promptly acquired a $390,000 home there and a name for the couple's business.

The pace picked up last year. The couple obtained licenses -- Johns a mortgage broker's, and Ross-Johns a Realtor's. His son moved in with them and became a full-time business student at the University of South Florida. Covington Mortgage brokered its first loan in December.

But God has bigger plans for the couple. "He told me - not audibly, I'm not some kook - 'I want you to start a bank, and I want my name outside the door,' " he says. " 'Not just on the money.' "

Times researcher Carolyn Edds contributed to this report. Scott Barancik can be reached at barancik@sptimes.com  or (727) 893-8751.

[Last modified April 6, 2007, 22:28:45]