Marc Ventura set up his own brokerage after realising how much he enjoyed helping people buy homes
One of those jobs that brings satisfaction time and time again, it’s no wonder Marc Ventura couldn’t resist moving into the broking space full-time.
MPA spoke with the financial planner, broker and director of Creative Financial Solutions about why he loves mortgage broking and the challenge of knowing when to take on more staff.
From extra income to educating home buyers
Ventura became a broker full-time in 2014 after he grew to love the process of helping people buy homes.
Before this he worked as a financial planner, and had started broking for an extra income stream before he expanded further into the space.
“The more I got into it, the more I started loving the ride.”
“It felt like it was an engaging and helpful relationship that you could have with people.”
“You could make things happen, and that’s probably what started to really endear me to the role.”
He especially liked the education side of things, and soon found himself in a niche market helping first home buyers who were purchasing land to build on.
“There’s a lot of garbagy information out there.”
“We were helping these first home buyers that were coming in with very little knowledge and very little deposits.”
“We were educating them on how it all works and all of a sudden it just went from there.”
Ventura continues to operate as a financial planner while running his mortgage broking business Creative Financial Solutions.
The challenge of building a team
Working closely with builder referrals partners meant that Ventura experienced a strong flow of clients from day one and so generating leads was never difficult. Instead, it was growing the team and setting up the right processes for staff that proved a challenge.
Part of this was knowing when to invest more money on new staff members and when to delegate the growing workload to existing staff.
“You’re constantly evolving at the end of the day. What you realise over time is you do have to put more people in to grow your volumes and grow your business.”
He says this has a reciprocal relationship; the extra time and headspace enabling you to write more business and deliver better outcomes for clients. Clients then tend to refer you more because they are happier, which then spurs on even more leads.
Persistence pays off over time
One of the most memorable lending scenarios he came across in his early days was a couple who had been led astray by a previous broker.
“They had included a lot of upgrades into their build contract and we had a huge amount of issues with valuations.”
“A number of different lenders were valuing the property lower and these clients were starting out with a much lower deposit so they didn’t have a lot of money.”
The male applicant also had some minor credit issues which made things even more difficult.
“It stands out because it took probably five or six months to finally get their approval.”
“There was a lot of working really hard just to help them find a lender that would value the property correctly, while also helping them to iron out their credit blemishes.”
Despite getting knocked back by lenders and experiencing shortfalls in valuations time and time again, Ventura was able to line up the finance they needed to move forward.
Throughout the six years since, the couple have referred family members and friends to the business because they saw how persistently Ventura worked to help them achieve their homebuilding goals.
