Networking Pays Off for Filipino Couple

It was Bayani Baloloy’s first trip to America, and an accounting job awaited him in New York.

But when the flight from the Philippines landed on the West Coast for a layover, Baloloy placed a call.

“I told my contact in New York: ‘I am in Los Angeles. If I can’t find a job by the end of the week, I’ll be in New York Monday.’ ”

By the end of that week, he had found a single-bedroom apartment with a relative in Hollywood. He bought a car for $100 and found accounting work through a temporary agency that paid $450 per month.

Today, 22 years later, Baloloy and his wife, Evelyn, of Anaheim own a real estate agency and a home mortgage brokerage, which has handled more than $18 million in financing in each of the past two years and caters mostly to Filipinos in Orange and Los Angeles counties.

“It is a gold mine for us,” Evelyn Baloloy said. Their home-mortgage business has a staff of nine, more than half of them are Filipino. The 3-year-old business has settled into an office suite in Artesia.

About 80% of their clients are Asian-American, and many of those are newly arrived Filipinos looking to resettle their families in Southern California, just as the Baloloys had done two decades ago.

“For Filipino people coming here, there is no culture shock. The people there are very westernized,” he said. “That is what surprises people about coming here from the Philippines, that was all very easy.”

Baloloy said that many Filipinos emigrate for economic reasons. When they arrive, they look to fellow Filipinos for assistance.

“Filipinos come to us because they feel comfortable in business negotiations with a Filipino broker,” Evelyn Baloloy said. They have built a network of clients and a good reputation. “It is nice for our clients to know that we understand their culture.”

The Baloloys also have become active in the Filipino-American community, from helping Filipino candidates run for local political office, to raising money and supplies to be sent back to the Philippines to help needy people and deteriorated schools.

Bayani Baloloy is treasurer of the Laguna Council and is vice president of the Calamba Assn. of Southern California. Both groups are composed of members who, like Bayani, are native to the Laguna Province in the Philippines, which is about 20 miles south of Manila. The groups serve both as business networks and relief organizations.

“We try to keep our culture in us,” Evelyn said of the family. They have four boys attending school in California. They have taken each of them back to the Philippines. “We want them to know where they came from.”