Regardless of the market you find yourself in, and maybe you need to change markets by the way, real estate agents manage to sell roughly 80% of all properties and 70% of the time that they recommend a mortgage originator to their buyer, the customer uses that originator. Now, that is control.
If you have followed my column over the years, you know that I recommend that every originator build a business based on real estate agent referrals. Now, while you are doing that, you should also concentrate on building business from your past clients. The more current clients you have, that you do an excellent job with, the more past clients you will have to help in the future. Since the average loan last, historically, for only five to seven years, after awhile, you should be enjoying a blend of new business and repeat business.
So how do you enter and sustain a business with referral partners, especially, real estate agents? Well, first, you must know what you are doing. You must be an expert at lending. Second, you must raise your persona in the marketplace. Over the years, I have developed a Road Map To Success with Agents that I will be happy to provide to you.
There is a road to doing business with agents. It is littered with originators that started off with ill-fated plans or with no plan at all. The biggest mistake originators make when pursuing agents business is to fail to realize that the agent has a commission riding on their selection of a mortgage company and if the mortgage originator does a poor job, they may not eat for the next month or two.
So when an agent calls for an update on a loan in process, and you do not call them back for a couple of days, you shouldn't wonder why the agent will not send you another deal and is worrying you to death on the only loan you will probably ever get from them.
If you do not communicate the status of a loan in process with the agent, you have failed. So, if you cannot commit to weekly status updates, and an immediate update as soon as you take the application, forget it.
Communicating weekly with agents about the loans they have in process, while simple, can be enhanced using the correct and time proven techniques.
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