Many people looking for a new and rewarding career will ask how to become a mortgage broker. The most important thing to know first is that becoming a mortgage broker is no easy task, but it can be gratifying. Aside from fulfilling your entrepreneurial aspirations, it’s a career centered around helping people and families fulfill their homeownership dreams. Read on to discover the path to the best mortgage broker destination.
What should your first steps be?
MAKE A PERSONAL CONNECTION WITH YOUR BORROWERS
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The first step to becoming the best mortgage broker should be to confirm that it’s what you genuinely want to do. This means talking to others already in the industry and, if possible, shadowing them for a few days.Being a broker and being the best mortgage broker can encompass a significant divide. If you want to be the best, it takes knowledge, professionalism and a boatload of hard work.
While it will feel incredibly rewarding when you see the smile on clients’ faces as they close their loans and accept the keys to their new homes, the process of getting there can be stressful — not just for consumers but for you as well. You must have the right constitution to handle it without burning out in the process.
What’s next?
Talking to and shadowing a mentor in the business is not just an excellent way to get a “taste” of the business, but it can (and hopefully will) lead to an apprenticeship of sorts. Being the best mortgage broker requires years of experience and hard work, and any shortcut to that point is going to be facilitated by working with others that are already on their way there.
Prerequisites exist – what are they?
Things changed a while back, and you’ll first need to be schooled, tested and licensed as an “MLO,” or mortgage loan originator. That’s the best way to start, as wholesale mortgage lenders – the companies that will finance your loans – will only do business with you if you possess the necessary qualifications and experience as a licensed mortgage broker.
The licensing and qualifications required to become a mortgage broker vary by state, but generally include a combination of education, experience and passing a state licensing exam covering topics like federal and state mortgage laws, ethical and professional conduct and mortgage loan origination. In many states, brokers must also complete pre-licensing education courses and accumulate a certain number of hours of work experience before they can apply for a license. Some states may also require a criminal background check and credit report review as part of the licensing process, and continuing education requirements are typically necessary to maintain an active license.
Working for someone else first will not only give you a chance to learn the business, but it also mitigates all the risk you would otherwise have by jumping right into your own shop. After you are sure being a broker is what you want, then you can pursue getting licensed in your state or any others you plan to do business in.
Once you’ve learned, been licensed, and taken the leap, what then?
Hopefully, you will have learned from your mentors that sourcing business is not easy. Being the best mortgage broker entails not only all the requisite experience, knowledge, intellect and compassion; it also requires that you can manufacture a full pipeline of prospects and applications month after month and year after year.
Creating new business will be your lifeblood. No one is going to pay you a salary; you only earn your keep when you close loans.
How to keep the pipeline full
Foremost to assuring a full pipeline is doing your very best for every borrower you work with. That’s how referrals are generated. However, your clients also need to remember your name, and that requires regular follow-up both before AND long after the closing.
Fortunately, staying in touch and keeping top of mind with past clients could never be easier than by using savvy technology, the likes of which is offered by Surefire℠ CRM and Mortgage Marketing Engine by Black Knight – a robust mortgage CRM packed with award-winning content to keep your inbound leads coming in month after month.
What’s better than just mortgage marketing is automated mortgage marketing. Using pre-built nurturing campaigns and perpetual workflows after the close means all you have to do is respond to your leads vs. constantly working on outbound marketing.
Being the best mortgage broker is more than just closing the most.
It takes more than a high volume of business to be the best mortgage broker, and you also need to be perceived that way by your clients and referral partners. That means you must be the most knowledgeable and consistently dependable in all that you do.
Continuing education and testing will be required. Here again, outfitting yourself with the best-automated mortgage marketing will help assure that you can concentrate on the most demanding parts of your career and be smart about the rest.
Over time, learning everything it takes to be a true professional, doing what’s right for your clients, maintaining a great database of every borrower and staying in touch with them regularly will put you on the road to best broker status!
To learn more about how easy the automated mortgage marketing part of becoming the best mortgage broker possible is, click the link here for a Surefire demo.