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How I helped 1,100 Americans Buy a Home Since 2020
By Terry Roberts
The Home Loan Hub
Published 3:00pm Jan. 2, 2023
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Navigating the home loan process can be intimidating as a buyer. It can be just as intimidating as a new or junior mortgage loan officer. If you’re a loan officer, you can probably appreciate the time and resources that it takes to close just one home loan, even if you’ve been a loan officer for twenty years.
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I am going to share how I closed 30+ deals each month since 2020.
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Do you have a reliable way to know exactly what your day will look like tomorrow?
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Do you realistically set monthly, quarterly, annual goals for your team? Do you achieve them?
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How accurate is your growth forecast for 2023 and 2024?
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Do you know how many assistants you will need to hire to accommodate your growth?
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How do you know that yours and your team’s capacity and conversion rate is maximized?
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The model that I use, will answer these questions.
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By using the model that I’m about share, I was able to help 1,100+ (mostly U.S. Veterans), in less than 3 years, navigate the entire home loan process and close on the purchase of their new homes or refinances with 97% customer satisfaction. This is not rocket science. The most complicated math would be basic arithmetic. Once your model is built, the most important part to ensure success is to manage your day with it. Document your process, know how much time it takes, and understand your realistic conversion rates throughout the process.
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Calling prospects, meeting with agents, establishing and maintaining an online presence, keeping up with industry news and guideline changes; these tasks alone could take 40 hours a week without proper focus.
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Once a client relationship is established and an executed real estate purchase agreement is received, the real work begins, i.e. ordering title, appraisal, tax transcripts, verification of employment (VOE), verification of deposit (VOD), advising on home inspections, advising on interest rate options, asking for more documentation, the list goes on.
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All of these tasks take time. Without focusing on how much time each task should take and understanding conversion between milestones, i.e. prospect > lead > preapproval > contract > close, it can be tempting to focus on the wrong tasks at the wrong time. Doing this will require more time overall to complete the process.
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Process: A set of interrelated activities that transform from inputs to outputs
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Think of the entire day as a process. Think of the tasks as the interrelated activities that transform the input (prospecting) to the output (closed loan).
Look at your day with focus on where you spend TIME and what the CONVERSION rate is in each milestone.
This will take some effort to establish how much time it takes to perform each task, but it’s worth the investment. Whichever way you perform the task, estimate how much time (minutes) it takes to complete once.
Example:
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Origination call – average time: 20 minutes
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Follow-up call to get income documentation for preapproval: 5 minutes
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Documentation review and preapproval issue: 10 minutes
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Preapproval call: 10 minutes
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The next step is just as important. Calculate the conversion of each milestone. While there may be one origination call, credit may not be high enough for that one. If 50% of initial origination calls (where credit is pulled) have non-qualifying credit, and the goal is to qualify 5 clients per month, then you will need to allot 200 minutes per month for origination. [10 client calls * 50% = 5 qualified clients with a 50% conversion]. Therefore, 10 client calls at 20 minutes per call = 200 minutes or about 3 hours and 20 minutes per month that you will need to set aside for origination.
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Perform this approach for all tasks. After gathering this information, consolidate it on whatever format you’re most comfortable using for spreadsheets, i.e. excel or google sheets. Once compiled, it should look something like this:
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This example indicates that by making 10 calls per month, with a 50% conversion rate, 5 clients will qualify and 4.5 of those client deals (on average) will close. As mentioned before, accurately estimating your conversion rate for each milestone, i.e. preapproval, contract, fall-out, etc… will affect the final number (output aka closings).
When accurately entering the time and conversion for each task and milestone in the process, this model will serve as a reliable dashboard for:
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Planning your day
No one wants to work 12-hours days for the rest of their life. Knowing what needs to be accomplished each day and how much time it will take can change your perspective on the days ahead. You know what’s coming and you have a better idea of how many loans you will close in the next 30-60 days.
Goal-setting
This model will bring out the elephant – no denying it. Once your model is up and running, it will be painfully clear to realize if it’s taking you 8 hours to complete 3 hours of work or not. Use this realization as an opportunity to improve.
Forecasting growth
Once your model is in place and you’ve been actively using it for a while, if you decide to grow your business, this model will give you the information that you need to scale.
Hiring assistants
We all can agree that goals never go down.If your goal-setting is like just about everyone else’s, then your goals will grow over time.Pairing proper goal-setting and growth forecasting with this model will also give you an idea of how many people you need to hire and when.
Monitoring performance
This model serves as a great tool for accountability. If you and/or your team slack in the process, productivity will show and you can begin drilling down where the time is or is not being spent that should be. Or there may be a change in the process, requiring more resource time. Or there may be a change in the market causing the conversion rates to change. Using a process-based approach to managing people performance is a great way to hold each other accountable without having to worry about taking criticism personally. The focus is on the process.The benefit will be in the hands of the people.
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At the end of the day, if you build your own model and manage with it, you and your team will have the ability to accomplish year over year growth in production, conversion, customer satisfaction, and morale.
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If you’d like a free copy of the proven model that I’ve used for the last decade, subscribe to my newsletter on LinkedIn.
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Terry Roberts is a U.S. Marine Corps Veteran and specializes in residential mortgages, including new construction, conventional, FHA, and VA home loans. He has helped more than 10,000 clients start the homebuying process across America.