Robert McLister
Someday we’ll retire, (God only knows when), and we might find ourselves in need of a mortgage.
Hopefully, we’ll be playing so much golf that we won’t have time to keep up on the mortgage market. So, we’ll need to track down a good mortgage planner.
But what would we, as mortgage planners, seek out in a mortgage planner? We asked ourselves that, and came up with these top 10 criteria.
- Be licensed in the industry over two years
- Experience is so crucial in this business. It just avoids so many headaches. New brokers are very eager to please, but if a newbie is going to make a mistake, better that it be on someone else’s file.
- Have closed at least $10 million of mortgages in the last 12 months
- Tenure alone doesn’t afford experience. Deal volume does.
- Have “status” at a minimum of three lenders
- For better pricing and faster lender turnaround
- Know the pros and cons of major mortgage products outside the broker channel (like those from RBC, BMO, and Manulife).
- So they can advise us objectively.
- Reply to emails in 8 business hours
- Who’s got time to wait?
- Return phone calls the same day
- Ditto
- Have a decent professional web presence
- Brokers who take pride in their marketing are usually fairly competent in other parts of their business
- Diversify their deal submissions
- And not send over 40-50% of their volume to any one lender. Otherwise, their objectivity could be impaired. (An exception is if they specialize in a mortgage that one particular lender offers.)
- Recommend the ideal term and explain the reasoning in plain language.
- And show us a hypothetical amortization comparison to back up that recommendation
- Get us a rate that’s within 10 basis points of the best available–for the mortgage product we need.
- We’re always happy to pay for service…but not overpay
Of course, there are many more broker selection criteria that could be added to this list. We’d love to hear yours!