When Edna M. Price made the move this spring to partner The Price Team with Stockton Mortgage, she had done her due diligence, having researched and interviewed potential lending partners for several months before making her final decision. “I had a checklist of things that were very important to me,” she said, “and Stockton checked off all the boxes. They have a really great product base, and they service their own loans, which is an indication of strength in a company. And they’re 100% debt-free, which made me feel really good about joining them. They also offer some unique products that I’ve always wanted and didn’t have before, like a doctor loan, barndominiums, and my biggest passion of late, reverse mortgages.”

 

Edna and her team are still in the same location with the same phone number. The only change is the name—The Price Team Powered by Stockton Mortgage—and Edna’s email address: edna.price@stockton.com.

 

On top of her work, Edna is the president of the Knoxville Mortgage Bankers Association (KMBA) this year. “I first got involved about eight years ago as a lender member,” she explained. “I’ve put my time in learning how the process works, and I’ve gotten to know a lot of people on the board. I have a passion to help make the Knoxville chapter the best it can be. We have won Chapter of the Year a couple times, back to back actually.”

 

“As president, my big goal is to have what I call ‘active participation,’” she continued. “My goal was to exceed 100 people at lunch—we were just over 80 at our last luncheon. I really enjoy KMBA, although it’s not easy. It’s strictly volunteer, and it’s time consuming. I’ll remain on the board next year as the immediate past president and then I’ll very likely move to the state level.”

 

Investing her time with KMBA and the state and national association is worth it to Edna. “The biggest value is that we try to bring current and pertinent information to not only our lender members but also to our affiliate members, such as real estate agents, insurance agents, moving companies, etc. We have a mortgage political action committee, and it’s been fascinating to learn how we can make a difference in legislation, even at our chapter level, if we all come together. We also fundraise and build houses for Habitat for Humanity.”

 

After graduating from UT with a degree in management, Edna got into the mortgage industry as an assistant to a loan officer in Maryville/Alcoa, back in the day of paper copies in blue ink that had to be overnighted to the lender. She jokes about her NMLS number being only five digits long—that’s how long she’s been around. She loved it from the beginning, and she has never looked back.

 

“I loved the idea of being able to help someone get into a home of their own,” she remembered. “I picked up on how to read credit right away and how you establish credit—pretty good for someone who grew up in foster care. Being in this industry allows me to help people who feel like they don’t know what to do and think they can’t ever be homeowners. I can say, hey, here’s what you do, ABC-123. I think I found my passion in the industry with helping first time homebuyers.”

 

One of the biggest life lessons Edna has learned is that it’s okay to ask for help and you don’t always have to do everything on your own. Now she gets up every morning looking forward to the challenge of “who is the next person I’m going to help?” and “what problem or issue am I going to fix today?” Bottom line, she works hard so she can play hard, which includes lots of boating and camping on the weekends.

 

Edna is most proud of her kids and the close-knit group of people at work she leans on to allow her to have a work-home balance. She loves 80s rock music, and two books she would recommend are Didn’t See That Coming: Putting Life Back Together When Your World Falls Apart by Rachel Hollis and The Most Powerful Woman in the Room Is You by Lydia Fenet. Her bucket list includes her upcoming trip to Brussels and Dublin, to charter a plane someday, and to own and operate a campground in her retirement.

 

At the end of the day, Edna wants to be remembered as someone who always tries to do the right thing the right way, someone who will always take the time to talk to others, no matter their life situation. “I want to be remembered for being that girl people could call and say, ‘Here’s my scenario…what do I do?’”