Getting Agent Referrals – Best Real Estate Industry Practices for LOs
Similar to the challenges brokers and agents face, staying relevant and connected with the right buyer pool is an ongoing challenge for any loan officer in the housing mortgage market.
Each sector of real estate is distinct from one another in how it operates, but the individual success of agents, brokers and LOs is highly correlated. As every LO knows, to be successful it’s about increasing customer exposure and mortgage leads.
In order to better position yourself as a LO in this market, we’ve gathered up some quick tips.
Build Strong Agent Relationships
You can’t have one without the other.
That’s the best way to describe loan officers and agents; they both need each other to be successful. Why? To start, you share a common goal — you’re both trying to get the sale done properly, quickly and without any hiccups.
Also, ensuring you maintain strong connections with other key players in the real estate industry helps increase your chances of client referral. Because potential home-buyers need to enlist the help of a broker, loan originator, and agent to make the deal complete, always leverage the power of connections.
Stay Mortgage Advertising Compliant
Enlisting the assistance of a service like RatePlug can ensure you are staying compliant with industry regulations. In fact, over 175,000 agents and their lending partners rely on Rateplug to keep them compliant when sharing property and lending information with their clients.
This applies to both loan originators and the agent involved in the home-buying purchase. RatePlug provides agents and their mortgage lenders with marketing and technology solutions to educate potential home buyers, but it also helps those agents remain compliant with the right records.
So how can LOs stay compliant? Ensure your records are in order. Per mortgage industry regulations, every piece of mortgage advertising, regardless of how it is distributed (email/social media/paper) needs to be retrievable for a minimum of two years. That includes anything distributed by LOs or agents.
Stay Current with Data
Everyone knows there’s only one thing constant in the mortgage industry: that nothing is constant. For LOs to be successful, and know how to market themselves, they must be up to date with the latest industry data. And as mortgage and refinancing application data patterns show, there’s plenty of fluctuation in this sector.
Because of that, LOs need to stay up to date with the habits of consumers (how, when and where people are buying or refinancing) in order to know how and when they should shift how they market themselves.
For instance, when mortgage and refinancing applications dip, that means LOs are competing for a shrinking pool of opportunity. This makes the mortgage industry even more competitive than it already is. LOs should be prepared to pivot as necessary to market themselves to the right buyer audience.
RatePlug Merges Technology with the Human Connection
While the real challenge for any LO is generating more customers and driving mortgage leads, what’s important to keep in mind is how to use technology without alienating potential home-buyers.
“Relationships are paramount for the mortgage business because we are dealing with big stuff. The ‘we’ is that this isn’t just about the relationship between the homebuyer and the mortgage officer,” said RatePlug CEO Brad Springer. ‘We’ also includes the unique partnership between a real estate agent and the mortgage loan officer who work as a team to help people get into their homes. Strong relationships married with the right technology provides the optimal service.”
The need for the professional experience of a loan officer to guide a buyer through the process is needed just as much today as ever, despite the growing influx of technology.
“People need not only the intuitive expertise of a professional real estate agent, but they also need the professional experience of a loan officer to guide them through today’s mortgage maze,” Springer said.