Patrick Ritchie
Patrick Ritchie has spent 15 years as a lender reviewing thousands of credit reports to prepare clients for the underwriting of their loans. Realizing credit was a major obstacle for home buyers he wrote his first three-hour class about credit, but was too nervous to present it. A year later, at the urging of his branch manager he got the class approved for continuing education in Arizona to present at the Southeast Valley Regional Association of REALTORS® (SEVRAR) for real estate license renewal.
One hundred real estate agents showed up, it was the best and worst experience a shy person who hated speaking in front of groups could suffer through. The best part was it proved he could do a three-hour class in front of 100 people without fainting or crying. The worst part wasn’t really that bad, it was just a matter of improving delivery, comfort, and making the class stronger. At the urging of friends and class attendees he expanded the class into a full book to be used as a reference, The Credit Road Map was born.
Today Patrick stands at that same spot at SEVRAR and enjoys teaching the classes, while always reminiscing about that first time. Some of his teaching and speaking includes:
•Guest finance speaker for the Ohio State University Fisher College of Business and Arizona State University W.P. Carey School of Business.
•Former instructor at Scottsdale Community College and guest speaker at Mesa Community College
•Approved instructor with the Arizona Department of Real Estate, Ohio Department of Real Estate.
•Senior GRI 201 finance instructor for the Arizona Association of REALTORS®.
•He has spoken at the National REALTOR® Conference and Expo, in Las Vegas, many state association functions, and has written articles for REALTOR® Magazine.
•Speaker at the NeighborWorks Training Institute held in Phoenix, Arizona
•8-hour monthly Financial Recovery class for Neighborhood Housing Services of Phoenix
•Internationally, Patrick has taught graduate exchange students from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) about the American banking and credit system at the Ohio State University.
When the market had fully crashed in 2008, rather than sitting around crying about the decline in mortgage applications, Patrick enrolled in law school at Arizona State University to earn a Master of Legal Studies. He devoured everything his eyes could read, the result: connecting the legal, credit and mortgage worlds into one. After graduation he continued in the mortgage industry creating more and more training material as real estate made a comeback, and ground breaking legislation was taking shape: Dodd-Frank Act.
Patrick wrote a foreclosure prevention and response program through a grant applied for by SEVRAR from the National Association of REALTORS® to educate the real estate industry as well as homeowners on solutions and planning. He was invited by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco to create and teach training workshops for the Arizona and Nevada Foreclosure Prevention Task Forces.
Patrick has a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the Ohio State University where he was an Evans Scholar, and a Master of Legal Studies from Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. He is certified by Westlaw in advanced legal research and holds a certification in the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
When Patrick isn’t writing or story boarding a new class, he loves playing with his two boys Declan and Mac, and spending time with his wife. His favorite hobby is the Insanity® workout because Shaun T helped him lose nearly 60 pounds. It wasn’t pretty or quick, but like a determined snail on a mission he slowly reached his goal.
