The new year is nigh and brokers should begin planning for what's ahead
The new year is nigh and brokers should begin planning for what’s ahead.
Frances Hinojosa, managing partner at Tribe Financial, encourages all of her brokerage’s agents to set goals for the upcoming year, as well as to keep continuing their education.
“What are you planning on doing for education, which courses should you be taking, and which conferences should you be going to? Look at all of that to make sure you’re up to date and relevant as a mortgage broker because, with the way we lend today, you have to keep yourself relevant constantly.”
Hinojosa’s forecast for 2019: Lenders will expect greater efficiencies from brokers now that the dust from B-20 has settled.
“They’ll expect brokers to be more efficient and prudent on their files upon submission,” she said. “There’s more paperwork because of B-20 and the expectation on the brokerage house is their agents are properly trained and doing their due diligence before submission.”
That may prove especially prescient if the whispers that chartered banks are rolling digital mortgages backed by call centres turn out to be true.
Brokers can also do their own forecasting by keeping up to date with their local real estate boards’ monthly and quarterly data reports, as well as those released by CMHC, Genworth and the like.
“That way, with any curve balls next year, you can easily adjust your targets according to whatever the new environment might be because you’ll have a plan,” said Hinojosa, adding that she expects consumers to return to the market in droves.
“With policy changes it takes the consumer anywhere from 12 to 18 months to get acclimated and become comfortable again. There’s still affordability out there for consumers and a lot of them have been waiting on the sidelines, so brokers should be looking out for that.”
Brokers should reach out to their partners and start setting next year’s targets, too. Rakhee Dhingra, a team lead in the Broker One network, has built her business around strategic partnerships with lenders and realtors. It’s with the latter of whom that she’s already setting targets for 2019.
“Going into 2019, my realtor partners and I are sitting down and setting targets, so I know that I may have six or seven teams who can give me $20 million each.”
