Kim: Exactly.
Ken: Maybe credit cleanup would be on the list, right?
Kim: Possibly, and multiple inquiries on the credit report during the time that you think you’re going to be looking to secure a mortgage. Inquiries will hit your credit score approximately seven points for every inquiry that is done outside of thirty days. In thirty days you could have several mortgage inquiries, and although the inquiries will show on the credit report, the score won’t be affected. The same is true with car loan shopping; it only counts as one inquiry on your score.
Revolving credit is different. If you were to go to apply for five different credit cards today, your score would drop 35-plus points. Thirty-five-plus points in my world could cost you a point on your rate.
Ken: Wow. That’s thousands of dollars, potentially.
Kim: Exactly.
Ken: Let’s focus a little bit on the business strategy and your expertise. For somebody looking to enter the mortgage business today, as a broker or a banker, somebody’s who’s just starting out, what would you say is the one thing they’d have to get just right to prosper?
Kim: They really need to understand customer service and transparency. They need to make sure to understand the real estate market that they’re in, and always, always, always be looking and knowing how to do a purchase loan versus a refinance loan.
The purchase market is critical at all times, that allows you start building relationships with real estate agents. You do that with service. The real estate agent will be your best referral source and be very loyal to you as long as you are on top of your closings, communicating, and keeping them informed, good, bad, or indifferent, but just so they’re always informed…. and answer your phone
Ken: Answer your phone’s a big one, right?
Kim: It’s huge. It’s huge.
Ken: I can see how having a mortgage broker on speed dial that’s responsive would be really important as a realtor when you’re trying to make deals and get deals closed. That’s critical. I’m assuming you work with lots of different realtors as a main referral source.
Kim: I do. I’ve been very, very fortunate to build a nice following with very loyal real estate agents that know that I will get the job done.
Ken: What’s the biggest mistake that you see professionals in your industry making when they’re first starting out? I’m sure you see people come and go in this market. What are some of the mistakes that really could cost them everything?
Kim: Not really disclosing their borrower completely and really allowing the borrower to understand the nature of the industry. It used to be I could rattle off the ten things that I knew that my borrower was going to need, send them into underwriting, and boom, we’d be done.
It’s not like that anymore. You have to prepare your borrower and make them understand that I’ve collected everything I can think of that could document to get your loan approved, but inevitably, there’s going to be something else that’s going to come up. There’s so much compliance, and there could be one signature that’s missing on a document from two weeks ago, when the initial disclosures went out. Now you’re getting ready to close, and it went all the way through the process, and nobody caught that that signature was missing. Now you’ve got to wait seven days, but you’re supposed to close tomorrow. Things like that happen all the time.
Ken: Oh gosh, that could really be a nightmare.
Kim: Things like that happen all the time. You have to be on top of it. You have to pay attention to the changes in the industry, and you have to be willing to read a lot of guidelines.
Ken: It sounds like not only being on top of your game, but really being an excellent communicator is critical in your business, both from a standpoint of getting more referrals and building relationships, and just really being excellent at what you do. I know you’re a great communicator. People are always praising you. What are some of the ways that you communicate with clients? Is it via e-mail, mainly, or is it cell phones, or what’s the best way you find to really stay in contact?
Kim: It’s everything. I text, I e-mail, I’m on the phone all day long. Some of my clients just prefer texting, and others really only prefer the personal touch.
Some I go and I meet, and I sit down, and we do their signatures. We don’t do the electronic thing because they prefer not to. It’s typically determined by the borrower’s preferences. Whatever they want, that’s what I give.
Ken: When someone’s first starting out in this business as a mortgage banker, what do you think two or three of the most common questions they might have about how to grow their business are? I would assume how to network would probably be one. What are some of the questions that a new mortgage banker might have about taking the business to the next level?
Kim: The main one is, ‘how do I begin to develop relationships with the people around me?”. We’re only as good as the experts around us. I tell my closers and underwriters all the time that they make me look really good.
