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Mr./Mrs. Perfect Broker

perfect-mortgage-broker 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.

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Our certain someone would:

  1. 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.
  2. Have closed at least $10 million of mortgages in the last 12 months
    • Tenure alone doesn’t afford experience. Deal volume does.
  3. Have “status” at a minimum of three lenders
    • For better pricing and faster lender turnaround
  4. 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.
  5. Reply to emails in 8 business hours
    • Who’s got time to wait?
  6. Return phone calls the same day
    • Ditto
  7. Have a decent professional web presence
    • Brokers who take pride in their marketing are usually fairly competent in other parts of their business
  8. 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.)
  9. Recommend the ideal term and explain the reasoning in plain language.
    • And show us a hypothetical amortization comparison to back up that recommendation
  10. 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!