If you're like just about every other loan officer I've met, you believe you have unique qualities that would appeal to potential clients (or Realtors or other referral sources) – qualities these people could only discover by getting to know you. If that Realtor or that person shopping for a loan really got to know you, you're confident they would choose you to be their lender, right?

But if they haven't had the opportunity or taken the time to get to know you, there's no way they would know about these unique and attractive qualities of yours, and as a result, they are likely to see you as pretty much like any other loan officer. Which is why everybody is always asking you about your "rates".

This is a problem for you, because if you don't stand out in the crowd, you'll never get the chance to show them all the really important reasons why you would be the "right" loan officer for a potential client or Realtor partner.

Most loan originators try to solve this problem by using e-mail marketing, developing a website, and/or using social media or other types of marketing in order to build name recognition and a reputation in their local markets. The various technologies involved can seem somewhat daunting at first, but for most of us, the learning curve is not that difficult. So you can set up an e-mail marketing account, a website, Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter accounts, and so forth, with a little bit of time and not too much trouble.

The hard part is coming up with things to say that people would actually want to read, or listen to, or watch.

Many loan officers would rather spend the afternoon in a dentist's chair than sitting in front of their computer writing something for other people to read. Once you get something down on paper (or pixels), your Inner Critic takes one look at it and tells you it's complete rubbish.

Other loan officers don't even get that far – writing anything, let alone something that would be informative, useful, and interesting, just seems like way too much trouble.

Whichever group you happen to belong to, you might end up buying canned content from one of the many providers out there -- people who know that there are a lot of you will pay good money to get something – anything – that you can use to feed your e-mail campaigns, website pages and blogs, and so forth.

The only problem with this approach is that it brings you right back to the problem you started with: you started with a desire to show potential clients and referral sources that you have unique qualities that would make you a better choice than any of your competitors. But now, because you're using the same content everyone else is using, you still sound just like everyone else.

And you have blown your chance to distinguish yourself in your market as someone unique and worth getting to know.


How to Solve This Problem

As you know, I coach mortgage professionals exclusively. I also limit the number of people I work with to no more than 20 full-time clients at a time. Among other services, I help my loan originator clients create their own unique content that they can use in their local markets to reach out to consumer (home buyer) leads, existing clients, Realtors, and other referral sources. We start with material I have written for this purpose, and then we work to personalize it for you and your market. And because I never work with more than 20 clients at a time, you can be confident that the content we create together will not only be interesting to your readers, it will be new to them.

If you'd like to find out more about how I can help you build your reputation in your local market, and if you've never had a free coaching session with me, please go here and request a free, personal, one-hour coaching session at no obligation.

In future posts, I will be sharing some of the things I've learned about creating content that is interesting, useful, and builds your reputation as a trusted expert in your field. Stay tuned.

It may seem like a flash of the blindingly obvious, but it's interesting and potentially useful information for loan originators who focus on building purchase business in their local markets: Inside Mortgage Finance recently commissioned a national survey of real estate agents, and found that Realtors express a clear preference for local lenders over call centers.

Why Do Realtors Prefer Local Lenders?

Delayed Closings. According to the survey, delayed closings are much more common when the buyer is not using a lender with a local office. You know from your own experience that Realtors get very nervous when it begins to look like the closing may be delayed because the lender has not obtained a final approval from underwriting. 

Lack of Accountability. A home sale with a $250,000 purchase price is worth $7500 commissions to each of the Realtors in the transaction. With that much money on the line, they don't like surprises, and they especially don't like having to deal with a contact person in a faraway city that doesn't rely on the Realtor for their business and is in no way beholden to the Realtor for the current transaction. It is almost impossible for a Realtor in this situation to get a straight answer from anyone in authority at the out-of-town mortgage center. And if there is a problem at the closing table after office hours, there is no one the Realtor can call to get the problem resolved.

Lack of Experience with Local Lending Laws. You know your state's laws as they apply to mortgage lending. According to the Realtors who were surveyed, Call Center companies that loan in all 50 states make more mistakes that can lead to delays or worse.

The Inside Mortgage Finance survey (conducted by Campbell Research) was apparently focused only on Call Center lenders, but many of the complaints voiced by Realtors about the call centers also apply to the nationwide megabanks. My coaching clients have frequently told me that Realtors are constantly complaining about the big banks, as well as the call centers, but they are often reluctant to say anything about it to their buyer clients. They don't want to appear to be trying to influence the client as to their choice of lender, and ultimately they're afraid of losing the client altogether. In many cases, the Buyer has already gotten "preapproved" online by the call center or the big bank before they even approach a Realtor. From the Realtor's point of view, it's hard to un-ring that bell.

Suggested Action Step: Every time a Realtor tells you about a negative experience with a Call Center or mega-bank, take down enough information from the Realtor so that you can construct a narrative of what happened. Collect as many of these as you can, and put them together into a report that you can circulate directly to your own clients and prospects. You can also make these reports available to your Realtor Partners for distribution to their clients and prospects. Remember: nothing beats evidence. (In assembling the stories for your report, be sure to quote the Realtor who is telling the story, and get permission to use their name. Avoid directly naming the call center lender or the mega-bank in question. Use as much detail as possible, including dates, numbers, specifics of the transaction – especially specifics on why the loan was held up or declined – but don't name the consumers involved unless they have given their permission.)

When you talk to Realtors in your market these days, you'll often hear the following:

• We just don't have enough inventory.
  
• Buyers are on the fence; they look at homes, but they're not making offers.
  
• Buyers are too picky.
  
• Buyers are unrealistic – they want everything, but they don't want to pay for it.
  

Corelogic reported in early May that there are currently about 2 million existing homes for sale nationally. This is very similar to the inventory levels we saw between 2000 and 2003.

But there's an important difference. From 2000 to 2003, we saw an average of 5.7 million existing home sales per year. But in 2013, there were only 5.1 million existing home sales, and so far this year, we are on target to see only 4.7 million homes sold – a 7.5% drop in sales from last year. And the decline in new home sales this year so far is even greater – 13.3%.

If we have the same level of inventory now as we did 10 years ago, why are there about 1 million fewer homes being sold?

An important part of the reason, according to the CoreLogic report, is that about half the current inventory of existing homes is obsolete: 

• "... properties that are no longer desirable because their characteristics do not match what buyers are looking for in a home. For example, homes that are located in once, but no longer, popular locations, or homes that are lacking in local amenities sought by today's buyers."
  

A lot of this "obsolete" inventory consists of foreclosed/REO properties, many of them located in areas that are no longer considered desirable. And location, as any Realtor will tell you, is everything.

At least some of those properties could sell (to first-time buyers, for example) if they are not located in blighted neighborhoods, and if those buyers are working with lenders who have the expertise to arrange 203K or conventional rehab financing.

But there is also something else going on here: 

The New Shadow Demand
The Corelogic article refers to a large number of consumers who are looking for a home, are qualified to buy a home, and are waiting because they can't find the "right home". Corelogic refers to these potential buyers as the new "shadow demand".

These potential buyers are in the shadows only in the sense that they haven't bought a home yet. They have, however, taken one or more of the following steps in that direction: they've looked at properties online, they've visited open houses, they've talked to Realtors and been shown properties on the market, and they've talked to lenders and/or have gotten prequalified or preapproved for financing. These are the buyers that Realtors believe are "too picky", "on the fence", or "unrealistic".

But I don't know, they seem pretty realistic to me.

Look at it from their point of view. Within recent memory (6 years), the entire housing market collapsed, decimating home values, sending reverberations throughout financial markets worldwide, and causing massive layoffs. Although the official unemployment rate is now "only" 6.3%, that's only because we're not counting people who are underemployed, or who have given up all hope of finding a job. Every one of these prospective home buyers personally knows people who lost their homes in the crash, lost significant equity in their homes, lost their jobs, or all three.

Would they like to own a home? Yes, absolutely. 

But that doesn't mean they're willing to gamble their financial future and their current quality of life just to be able to say they own a home. These homebuyers who are seen by Realtors (and by many loan originators) as being "too picky" are, in many cases, looking at the available inventory in their area, are comparing it to their current living situation, are doing the math, and deciding that, for now at least, the price isn't worth the risk.

It is certainly possible, and even likely, that these consumers are seeing an incomplete picture. It's possible they're being influenced too heavily by their fears – fears of another housing crash that would destroy any equity they may have built in their home, fears of losing their jobs, and fears of another economic downturn – or just a continuation of the economic stagnation we've seen for the last 7 years.

It's also possible that there are homes for sale in their area that would, in fact, represent an improvement in both their quality of life and their family's financial strength, but they lack the imagination or the information to be able to see it.

But who is going to help them see it? If they're working with a Realtor, they may like their Realtor, but they are also fully aware that the Realtor wants to sell them a home. They may be working with a lender, but in the vast majority of cases, their lender has focused exclusively on their ability to qualify for a particular loan product.

What they don't realize (because their loan officer hasn't taken the time and trouble to explain it to them) is that the lender has the same interests, and is on the same side of the negotiating table as they are. No responsible lender wants to loan them money to buy a house they cannot afford. No lender wants to loan them money to buy a house that the market (as determined by an appraisal) says is not worth what they are being asked to pay for it.

Loan officers who have the vision and the courage to position themselves and serve as "Home Buyer Coaches" are in a unique position to help their home buyer clients arrive at a strategy for finding and buying the right home at the right price. Such loan officers are also in a position simultaneously to be of service to their Realtor Partners in helping them move non-obsolete inventory.

And it is only when we begin to see more of this inventory moving that the market will create the conditions necessary to motivate "shadow sellers" – whether they be homeowners who are hesitant to sell now, or builders who are cautious about building now – to put more inventory on the market.

The first step forward is for loan originators to learn how to talk to prospective homebuyers in a way that helps them feel safe and comfortable in confiding their fears and concerns about buying in today's market. That will lead to opportunities for originator/homebuyer coaches to provide objective information and coaching that will help these consumers make the right decisions to fit their goals and situations – decisions that clients will be able to look back on with satisfaction and pride in the years to come -- whether they decide to buy, or to wait.

I will show you how you can take that first step forward in my next (free) online seminar, How to Do an Effective Home Buyer Prospect Interview, on Wednesday, June 11th at 3:00 PM Eastern time. If you have already registered for my "Who's Got Time for That?" Seminar series, you will receive instructions for joining the seminar in your e-mail beginning Monday. If you haven't registered or want more information, go here:

http://www.coachbobwilliamson.com/seminars.html

Almost any loan officer can get a Realtor to give them a buyer lead as a way of seeing what the LO can do with it, expanding the Realtor's financing options, or maybe because the Realtor's current lender just blew a deal.

Of course, it's not my approach to suggest you go around to Realtors asking for charity, or even "a chance" -- my approach is to come to Relators with a very solid value proposition that offers them significant benefits they're probably not getting from their current lenders.

In previous seminars, I showed you how to raise your visibility with the Realtors in your market through the use of content marketing that is both relevant and useful to agents. I showed you how, with patience, good content, and appropriate calls to action, you can get Realtors to reach out to you (rather than you being one of many loan officers chasing after them). I showed you how to do an interview in which Realtors come face to face with the statistical evidence in their business that shows them the true cost of the opportunities they are missing every day.

In September's seminar, I showed you how to follow that interview with a presentation that shows them exactly why they're experiencing the problems they are, and shows them how you can make an enormous difference for them by making a couple of simple changes in the way they handle the leads they are already generating.

When loan officers follow the process  I laid out in these 4 previous seminars, they are able to break through the barriers Realtors have erected (especially since refis went away and every Realtor is now getting bombarded by LOs who didn't pay much attention to the purchase market until there were no more refis to do). When you give the presentation I shared with you in the September seminar, you will make a very strong impression, and Realtors will be enthusiastic about working with you.

But how do you follow through, and how do you get the Realtor to follow through? Because Realtors will begin to forget how excited they were as soon as you leave. Unless you keep the momentum going, they will forget most of what you told them within a week.

In the most recent seminar (held on November 14th), I show you how to systematically build your Realtor relationships, and solidify your gains.

The video of that seminar is now posted on the site, and you can view it here.

As you probably know, I've been presenting a series of free monthly online seminars on how to develop your purchase market business.

The latest of these seminars, How to Give Effective Presentations to Realtors, presented on Sept. 19th, is now available for you to view on the website here. You can also access previous seminar videos here

I will be traveling some in October, so the next online seminar -- How to Develop Solid Realtor Partnerships -- will be on Thursday, November 14th at 11:00 Eastern Time (12 Noon Pacific). If you were registered for the last seminar, you're automatically enrolled in all future seminars in this series. But if you haven't registered yet, you can do that here.

For a preview of what will be covered in the new seminar, please go to the Seminars page

In the movie "Jerry Maguire", there's a famous scene at the end, where Jerry expresses his love in a long-winded speech to the Renée Zellweger character.

At some point, she interrupts him and says, "You had me at hello."
Unfortunately, when it comes to "courting" Realtors, you hardly ever have them at "hello". And if you don't establish enough productive, mutually beneficial relationships with Realtors in your market area, you're entering the purchase market race with one leg and both arms tied behind your back.

Loan officers tell me that one or more of the following things prevent them from getting enough purchase leads and referrals from Realtors:

• "I don't know enough Realtors."
• "I can't get Realtors to talk to me."
• "Realtors tell me they will send me business, but they don't follow through."
• "Most of the Realtors I know are too high-maintenance."

In addition to these obstacles, here are some of the things you have probably heard Realtors say -- mostly as a way of getting rid of you:

• "I already have a lender (I'm happy with)."
• "My office has an in-house lender that we have to use."
• "Most of my buyers already have a lender."
• "I'm a listing agent; I don't really work with buyers."
• "Sure, I'd be glad to talk with you, but I'm busy right now; can you call me sometime next week?"

If you've heard these kinds of responses from Realtors (and let's face it, you almost certainly have), you know how discouraging it can be.

So we need to figure out why you keep running into these obstacles when you try to get leads and referrals from real estate agents.

If you want better results with your Realtor outreach, there are a few things you will want to understand about them. Read the full article here.

With interest rates up above 4% for the first time in a while (since August 2011, I think), a lot of mortgage loan officers are starting to think about rediscovering the existence of a purchase market.

Better late than never, as they say.

One of my clients (who has not been neglecting the purchase market) recently asked me for suggestions on topics and subject areas that would make good, relevant content to help him further build his visibility and credibility among the Realtors in his marketplace.

See my recommendations here.

If you were a fan of the 90's show The X-Files, you might remember that Agent Mulder kept a poster hanging in his work cubicle that said, "I want to believe".

And while we might not all want to believe in little green men, all of us in the real estate and mortgage industries want to believe that the housing market is on a strong path to recovery.

There are plenty of encouraging signs, too. But one claim that is being trumpeted is a bit premature: that we have entered a Seller's Market.

While home prices have been rising consistently lately, and inventory is declining, there is one necessary ingredient for a seller's market that we don't have yet: a strong and growing pool of buyers ready, willing, and eager to buy a home.

The fact is, we're running about 1.3 million units a year behind the average number of homes sold between 2001-2009 (which includes pre-boom, boom, and bust years).

And there are some fairly significant headwinds in our economy and real estate market that are pushing against the creation of enough buyers to raise those sales figures.

As just one loan officer, you may not be in a position to impact the national real estate market, but you can certainly have an impact on your local market, and in the process, you can build a reputation with both Realtors and Consumers as the go-to lender for the home purchase market -- which will put you in a very good position when we finally do fully recover from the disaster that struck in 2007-2008.

For a full analysis, and my recommendations for productive action, see my latest white paper, The Phantom Seller's Market -- which you can read on this site or download as a PDF.

One of my coaching clients sent me a link to a post on Linked in by David Edelman of McKinsey and Company:

The funnel is dead. The new consumer decision journey.

Mr. Edelman explains that the funnel (referring to the traditional image of a sales funnel, where leads go in at the top of the funnel and come out at the bottom as closed sales) is an outdated concept because today's consumers take a more complex path toward, and beyond a purchase decision. Instead, he uses a model that includes the following steps in a buying decision:

1. Consider: What brands/products do consumers have in mind as they contemplate a purchase?
2. Evaluate: Consumers gather information to narrow their choices.
3. Buy: Consumers decide on a brand and buy it.
4. Post-purchase: Consumers reflect on the buying experience, creating expectations/considerations that will inform a subsequent purchase
5. Advocate: Consumers tell others about the product or service they bought.

My client shared the following thoughts, based on his interpretation of Mr. Edelman's article:

Here, in part, is how I responded to my client:

As you know, I have been saying for years that it isn’t a funnel, it’s a sieve (because Realtors and loan officers capture and close such a small percentage of their opportunities).

As for getting people (clients) to advocate for you, I had a conversation with a client about that a couple of days ago. These days, people rarely go out of their way to recommend a vendor (and to your loan customers, you are a vendor).

Why?

Because they are so rarely truly impressed in a business transaction. They’ll talk about you if you really screw up (read Joe Girard’s How to Sell Anything to Anybody). But most loan officers – most businesspeople – have no clue as to what it takes to rise to the level of performance where people can’t resist talking good about you (advocating for you) to their friends.

Here’s an example: if you know anybody who has recently bought an iPhone or an iPad, chances are they will brag about it, show it to you, etc. Why? Because the darn things are so different from everything else out there, and because buying one makes you feel cool.

You can send your canned loan status updates out every week (a 1990’s idea at best), but these days it’s more likely to result in people blocking your emails than it is to result in a referral.

Yes, you do have to take great care of your clients, but very often your idea of taking great care of a client is the client’s idea of “good” service – and they expect good service. It doesn’t mean they’re going to recommend you to their friends (unless maybe somebody specifically asks them for a recommendation). It does mean that if you don’t give them good service, they will complain about you for as long as it takes them to stop being ticked off at you.

It takes so much more than good (or even great) service to really impress people these days – and that is why it is so important to really stand out from your competition by doing something extraordinary – like being a great homebuyer coach in addition to being a great loan officer. For a description of what I mean by this, see my training video, "How to Succeed in This Terrible, Awful, No-Good, Lousy Market" -- especially Parts 2 and 3.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with doing the things you suggest. None of those things is going to hurt you, and if you don’t do most of them, it probably would hurt you. But it takes far more than that to really surprise and impress people today – and people only become advocates for you if you impress them -- really impress them.

According to today's Wall St. Journal, The Fed plans to continue buying long-term mortgage-backed and Treasury bonds well into 2013.

But the folks currently running the Fed -- who have never been what you would call students of the Law of Unintended Consequences -- are disappointed that mortgage lenders -- especially the big banks -- aren't using the lower borrowing rates (created by Fed policy) to lower rates for consumers, or even to make more mortgage loans.

From Inside Mortgage Finance:

I'm sure you all see the problem here. With one hand (the Fed), the government is reducing the cost of money to lenders. With the other hand (the former GSEs and the CFPB -- and soon, FHA too), the government is raising the risk level for doing any mortgage lending at all -- unless those loans are cookie-cutter deals that are documented to the hilt, and buyback-proof.

I've written before about who caused the housing bust and the financial crisis, so I don't need to go into all that again. It really shouldn't take a genius to figure out that if you make money cheaper for the lending industry, and make it simultaneously  dangerous to lend to any but the absolutely safest borrowers, you create the conditions for exactly what is happening -- fewer loans being made, little competition or incentive to make more loans, and bigger margins for lenders on smaller volume of loans.

Here's the silver lining for originators: these are the kind of market conditions that will put a premium on the services of highly professional and extraordinarily competent loan officers who build their reputation on the fact that they don't take on bad loans, and they close every loan they submit -- because they know what they're doing and they don't take "no" for an answer.

Have you been tracking your success rate at closing the loans you turn in? If not, you might want to start, and I would take the opportunity presented by the time of year to go back through at least all the loans you submitted this year. Below, you can download a free spreadsheet/form you can use to track your proficiency in this important metric. And the next time a Realtor or prospective client asks you what makes you better than the next LO, you'll have something to show them that I'm willing to bet 95% of your competition won't.