For the Labonte Family, Their Community is Home
By Melissa Karen Sances | Photos by Nikki Gardner Photography
Published in Northampton Living | December 2025
“A mortgage goes beyond a one-time transaction – it is the gateway to a home,” says Lindsay Barron LaBonte, the branch manager of Applied Mortgage. The organization, founded by her father Todd Barron in 2002, has risen to new heights under her leadership. By helping families plant roots and strengthening local businesses, she is influencing more than the housing market – she’s shaping the future of the community.
Her own family is intertwined with Applied Mortgage. When LaBonte was a kid, she couldn’t wait until her dad came home from the office. She “borrowed” his briefcase and followed him around, asking what he needed to help someone buy a house. Someday, she wanted to help families achieve the “American dream.”
On her own terms, that is. “I never wanted to ride the coattails of my dad,” she explains. After earning a bachelor’s degree in legal studies at UMass Amherst and a master’s in business administration from Western New England University, LaBonte became a licensed mortgage broker at age 20. With her father’s blessing, they put together a succession plan and she worked her way to the top.
Barron, who says he got started in “a belly-to-belly business I built on meeting every single customer face-to-face,” is proud of how LaBonte utilized her education and penchant for technology to enhance the organization’s community impact. “We welcomed her with open arms.”
Giving Her All
LaBonte says that Applied Mortgage assists people before, during and after owning a home. Her team has helped more than 18,000 clients, and she is honored that two or three generations of the same families often turn to them over time.
Through the Applied Mortgage Academy, the team offers complimentary monthly webinars and seminars to first-time and repeat buyers, as well as real estate professionals. And this year, LaBonte launched Real People, Real Estate, a podcast that highlights local real estate agents, economists, investors and homeowners who provide insight into the current market.
She is quick to acknowledge that the market has changed considerably over the past 20 years, and that not everyone can afford to buy a house. While the median home price has nearly doubled since 2018, wages lag behind in an economy increasingly defined by inflation. “We can’t lose sight of making sure that people who want to live and work here can actually afford it,” says LaBonte. “Now more than ever, supporting our local neighbors is crucial to ensure the community we’ve built continues for generations to come.”
Her team helps more than 30 local nonprofits per year through donations, volunteering and marketing services. Through their Local Love Days, Applied Mortgage brings its considerable network into local businesses. On a personal level, LaBonte has served on more than 16 community organizations, including the Northampton Chamber of Commerce, and is now on the board of the United Way of the Franklin & Hampshire Region.
Coming Full-Circle
LaBonte and her husband Sam both grew up in the area, reconnecting in 2017 when he got preapproved for a mortgage. The couple owns a 14-acre farm as well as SGL Carpentry & Design, where Sam does custom woodwork. They enjoy taking their two young girls to places they visited as kids that they now support.
“They loved the Look Park trains,” says LaBonte, who is on the organization’s development committee. “It’s fun to experience something I did as a kid through their eyes, and see how this world is just astonishing to them.” The family also goes apple picking at Atkins Farms and ice skates at the Mullins Center.
When LaBonte and Sam bought their house, she had always dreamed of having a wraparound porch, so he proposed to her right there. “It was one of those full-circle moments where home is so important in our lives,” she says. “Now we’re out there with our girls and our dogs, making family memories.”
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