How to Get Appointments with Realtors
Part 1: Building Basic Credibility
It's no secret that mortgage rates have risen from their record lows, and far fewer homeowners are thinking about refinancing now.
The purchase market has already begun to take up some of the slack. The first quarter of 2013 was the best for purchase money originations since 2008, according to Inside Mortgage Finance. Not only is the trend expected to continue for the rest of this year; some industry experts expect that home purchase mortgages will account for as much as 50% of total originations in 2014.
Any loan officer who has done both purchase and refi transactions understands that building a purchase transaction business requires a completely different strategy from the one you might employ to attract more refis.
80% of homebuyers who finance their home purchase have found their lender through a Realtor. If you want to succeed in the purchase market, you have to know how to generate more mortgage referrals from real estate agents.
Last month, I presented a free online seminar called "How to Get More Leads from Realtors" (watch the video here). I surveyed everyone who registered for the seminar and found that 72% of loan officers said they either didn't know enough Realtors, or that they couldn't get Realtors talk to them, or both.
If you try hard enough, if you make enough calls, you can get a Realtor on the phone with you. But there is a huge difference between getting an agent on the phone with you, and having anything like a substantive conversation. So if you do manage to catch a Realtor answering his or her phone, as soon as they find out you are a loan officer, you're likely to hear one of the following things.
59% of the loan officers in my last seminar told me that even when they were able to have a good conversation with an agent, and the Realtor told them they would be referring them business, the Realtor never delivered or follow through (and they were almost impossible to reach after that).
The purchase market has already begun to take up some of the slack. The first quarter of 2013 was the best for purchase money originations since 2008, according to Inside Mortgage Finance. Not only is the trend expected to continue for the rest of this year; some industry experts expect that home purchase mortgages will account for as much as 50% of total originations in 2014.
Any loan officer who has done both purchase and refi transactions understands that building a purchase transaction business requires a completely different strategy from the one you might employ to attract more refis.
80% of homebuyers who finance their home purchase have found their lender through a Realtor. If you want to succeed in the purchase market, you have to know how to generate more mortgage referrals from real estate agents.
Last month, I presented a free online seminar called "How to Get More Leads from Realtors" (watch the video here). I surveyed everyone who registered for the seminar and found that 72% of loan officers said they either didn't know enough Realtors, or that they couldn't get Realtors talk to them, or both.
If you try hard enough, if you make enough calls, you can get a Realtor on the phone with you. But there is a huge difference between getting an agent on the phone with you, and having anything like a substantive conversation. So if you do manage to catch a Realtor answering his or her phone, as soon as they find out you are a loan officer, you're likely to hear one of the following things.
- I already have a lender I am working with.
- We have an in-house lender (that we're required/encouraged to use).
- I mostly handle listings (I don't work with buyers).
- I'm busy right now, could you call me back later?
59% of the loan officers in my last seminar told me that even when they were able to have a good conversation with an agent, and the Realtor told them they would be referring them business, the Realtor never delivered or follow through (and they were almost impossible to reach after that).
It's enough to make you think that Realtors have all taken a class in How to Get Rid of Loan Officers.
If your reality is that Realtors don't seem to want to talk to you, it might help you to face and deal with that reality by keeping in mind two important points from my "How to Get More Leads from Realtors" seminar in July:
This is why you must differentiate yourself from all the other loan officers in your marketplace. It is very difficult to do that when the Realtor stops listening to you as soon as they realize you're a loan officer. So unless you have an amazing telephone presence, and you have already had a great deal of success getting through to Realtors on the phone, you need a better strategy.
And this is why I have been urging you to develop and deliver relevant, interesting, and useful Content to the Realtors you would like to work with.
If you do this right, and if every time you deliver useful content to your target list of Realtors, you also provide them with a convenient and easy way to let you know they're interested, the Realtors who are interested will let you know they're ready to talk. And this is far more efficient than spending an hour a day playing "telephone roulette".
If your reality is that Realtors don't seem to want to talk to you, it might help you to face and deal with that reality by keeping in mind two important points from my "How to Get More Leads from Realtors" seminar in July:
- Every Realtor in your marketplace already has at least one lender they are sending business to. Unless a Realtor has a compelling reason (like, their current loan officer just messed up on a transaction and they're still really steamed about it), there is very little incentive for a Realtor to spend time talking to another loan officer.
- If a Realtor has been in business for 5 years, that Realtor has probably been approached by at least 100 different loan officers over that time. And it is a virtual certainty that the Realtor did not hear 100 different pitches or presentations from those loan officers. Instead, he or she has heard pretty much the same pitch 100 times. (And to understand further why an agent would have little incentive to hear the pitch for the 101st time, see point #1 above.)
This is why you must differentiate yourself from all the other loan officers in your marketplace. It is very difficult to do that when the Realtor stops listening to you as soon as they realize you're a loan officer. So unless you have an amazing telephone presence, and you have already had a great deal of success getting through to Realtors on the phone, you need a better strategy.
And this is why I have been urging you to develop and deliver relevant, interesting, and useful Content to the Realtors you would like to work with.
If you do this right, and if every time you deliver useful content to your target list of Realtors, you also provide them with a convenient and easy way to let you know they're interested, the Realtors who are interested will let you know they're ready to talk. And this is far more efficient than spending an hour a day playing "telephone roulette".