Let’s start off with why it is necessary to maintain and cultivate relationships with realtor partners.
Why do loan officers need to work with real estate agents?
Occasionally, real estate agents may meet a cash buyer that is interested in purchasing real estate property. However, the majority of the time, buyers take out home loans to purchase their homes. Since home loans are more common, home buyers typically look to their real estate agent for a lender recommendation. Therefore, a realtor partner relationship is extremely crucial for all parties involved to succeed with the home purchase at hand.
A great relationship with a real estate agent is one of the most important resources for any Loan Officer. After all, building long term relationships with referral partners is integral in helping loan officers with keeping their volume up. Which means more deals and success for both parties.
We’ve put together 3 tips to help you attract and maintain realtor partners, and also stand out from the competition.
1. Transparency and Communication
First of all, you’ve probably heard this countless times, but we really stress transparency and open communication. Not communicating with your realtor partner puts stress on the home buyer. So, don’t leave your realtor out of the loop.
Efficient communication and responsiveness between all parties will help build trust and respect. Make sure to involve your realtor on updates throughout the loan process. Using a loan process checklist that automatically updates all parties is a great way to start.
2. Leverage Technology
Second, keeping your referral partners informed throughout the loan process is the best way to show them you value their relationship. However, constantly updating partners while you are busy doing all the necessary tasks to close is time consuming. So, utilizing a feature like Jungo’s automated pipeline reports in Reffinity will help you save time and still keep your partners updated.
Reffinity helps you understand which referral relationships are bringing in the most closed loans which will help you focus your efforts on maintaining high-value relationships. With this feature you can track the number of referrals received, determine which referrals are deep referrals. You can also track total number of loans closed in volume/units.
You can also automate updates to your referral partners such as sending the automatic “Thank You for the Referral” emails, schedule customized reports for individual referral partners and also manage default settings on automated reports across the board.
This is only one of the countless automated features a CRM, like Jungo, can do for you. Ultimately, saving you time to focus on what matters most, closings and clients.
3. Work Together as a Team
Believe it or not, Loan Officers and Real Estate Agents have one goal in mind, to make the client happy. However, it’s easy to lose focus of the primary goal due to not always seeing eye to eye.
Loan Officers may not recognize the hard work that goes into assisting their mutual client in finding the right home, making an offer, and then negotiating the final terms of the sale. On the other hand, the Realtor may not understand the loan process, and be frustrated by the various obstacles that arise as their client’s loan application moves toward approval.
In the end, you and the real estate agent are a team and need to work together for the happiness of the client. So, once you establish a common ground, put differences aside, and realize team work makes the dream work, it will be that much easier to close more deals together.
You can start tracking and measuring your realtor partner relationships through Reffinity in Jungo. For more information about Jungo’s Reffinity feature, click here.
