Whether it’s due to a pandemic or a bidding war, top producers and their teams know how to ensure home loans close when the going gets rough for borrowers, and the ladies on the list are no exception.
That’s why we asked women who are among the top 50 highest-producing mortgage loan officers what they think this year’s key challenges will be, and asked them to share how they plan to tackle them.
They zeroed on the
“Right now, I think we’re going to have a shortage of housing. It will be
“I am sticking with all the systems I created for my team and reaching out to my database,” said Hoeffer. “This helped me get through 2020 with record-breaking numbers and I plan to keep creating video content and educating consumers.”
Stephanie Dombrowski, a mortgage loan officer at Ent Credit Union, plans to work closely with her referral partners to figure out how to address the housing shortage and offer her company’s broad range of loan products to that end. Those products helped last year when jumbo financing available in the secondary market dried up due to disruptions due to the pandemic and it will help address inventory issues as well, by equipping borrowers with financing they can use to act quickly when homes become available.
“We’re reaching out and saying, ‘What in the heck do you need to get under contract in this market?” Dombrowski said. “A lot of Realtors are not doing enough business because there aren’t enough houses to sell and we want to be their first call to help.”
For loan officers new to the business, Dombrowski advises focusing on building professional ties with referral partners who can help solve inventory challenges for borrowers rather than trying to establish themselves by buying leads that lead to single transactions.
“Your goal should be to build a relationship with a Realtor or a builder that’s going to count on you rather than just going after one loan,” she said.
The market appears to be undergoing a shift away from refinances and remote operations that is making purchase loan sources more important and in-person interactions more possible. Nevertheless, the top producers interviewed for this article don’t plan to abandon refis or digital advances as priorities.
“Rates have been going up slowly, so you want to make sure people are benefiting from a refinance if there are any savings on the table for them,” said Jennifer Tsang, sales manager at Better.com.
Although face-to-face interactions may increase with vaccines rolling out, there will likely be a persistent trend toward more digital interactions, she said.
While several forecasts commonly suggest mortgage costs will be a little higher this year, women on the Top Producers list generally aren’t ruling out another wild card development like the sudden rate drop in response to the pandemic last year.
“No one really knows what’s going to happen to rates in the future. Whether it’s someone looking to refinance or purchase a home, I really just look forward to helping,” said Zoey Cigar-Hodge, a loan officer who also works at Better.com.
There is a risk that a hot market won’t turn out to be the key challenge for housing this year. However, so long as federal monetary policy officials remain committed to their plan to hold interest rates low for a while, it probably will be, Hoeffer said.
“There are other factors in the next decade that could come about and maybe create a buyer’s market. There are interest rate changes, and an aging community that could vacate properties,,” she said. “Those kinds of things might have an impact, but as of today, I think market conditions will be in favor of sellers.”
