What I Do...

The best chance of making a sale is first thing in the morning. You sit down with your coffee and you log into the system. You have anywhere from 2 to 5 fresh leads in your system. If you are the first person to reach these people your odds of closing the deal are high and it could be a great start to the morning. If you aren’t the first person… well, it could be all downhill from here.

This is how a residential loan consultant starts his day… everyday.

You get into the office and you get on the phones. If you are doing your job you will already have deals in your pipeline that you can work on and that will eat up anywhere from 1 to 3 hours of your day. The real meat of your day however, is spent dialing and dialing… waiting for someone to pick up and listen to what you have to say.

I am trying to convince someone who filled out a form online, that they should refinance their home with me. I am honest and I tell it like it is, yet because of the nature of my industry many are prone to distrust me at first.

Do they have a right to be so apprehensive? Absolutely. We are dealing with their most important asset; their home. Are they apprehensive for the right reasons? Absolutely not. They think everyone is a cheat and a crook trying to juice them for anything they can cram into the closing costs of a loan. There are people out there who do this, but more often then not, the person on the other end of my phone has no clue what they should be looking out for and thus end up going with that person unknowingly.

You would be amazed at the things people associate with a good deal:

“This guy is promising me the lowest rate and the lowest closing costs…”
Well, he also left about $4,000 worth of fees off of your Good Faith Estimate. You can’t get lowest fees and lowest rate… it doesn’t work like that, and no one I have met in this industry works for free.

“This person said my home will appraise for $100,000 more than you guy said…”
Well, when that appraisal gets cut in the internal review process, what is your guy going to do then? Create the same loan I am, but increase his fee’s for “his extra work”.

“I spoke to another guy this afternoon who said he can get my 5.00% on a 30yr fixed…”
He could get you that… 3 years ago. Plus, did he put any discount points on his Good Faith to let you see that he is buying down his rate substantially to try and get as close as possible to that rate?

These are very basic things that homeowners get talked into thinking is possible. You will think by going with the cheapest person, you are getting the best deal? That notion is much farther from the truth than you would like to believe.

A good source of information to check out is Blown Mortgage. The author of the site owns a mortgage company and relays all sorts of inside information that you as a consumer may not typically get. Plus he does it anonymously with no ties to his own company.

With this job there are some tremendous ups and downs. My goal is to even those out into a nice flat line so I don’t get extremely excited over a potential $15,000 month because it could quickly turn into a $00,000 month… actually it would turn into a negative month because I would owe my boss a desk fee at that point (since I am a waste of money for him that month). It can be stressful at times…

Don’t cry for me (Argentina) though… I choose this job and all that comes with it. You live with the ups and you live with the downs… I am just trying to make it through to the other side of this industry where I can tell people to make phone calls for me…

Go read Blown Mortgage now…