"I think transparency is something that’s really lacking in our industry"
Among the various tools that a mortgage brokerage can deploy on the road to success, few are as powerful as an extensive network of industry relationships.
A major benefit of these linkages is the opportunity to continually refine one’s approach to the business, according to Anish Pabari, senior partner at Elite Lending Corporation.
“I learned to make sure my team and I have relationships with all managers and underwriters in the B space,” Pabari told Canadian Mortgage Professional. “I also learn to understand businesses and financial statements, as well as build pertinent relationships with mortgage investment corporations and individual private lenders at all levels – from families with $500,000 HELOCs to rich investors lending $10 million or more annually.”
Due to the ever-evolving nature of the mortgage space, industry relationships will help in keeping oneself up-to-date “on policies, lenders, rates, and market news,” Pabari added. “You will figure the rest out as you go along.”
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For Christine Buemann, co-founder of The Collective Mortgage Group, the importance of relationships highlights what’s still missing in the industry.
“I think transparency is something that’s really lacking in our industry. So we share consistently our volumes as well as all the funds that come in with our brokers,” Buemann said. “A lot of lenders pay points, or they may pay some sort of back-door money, and we disclose all this to our team.”
“For those lenders who pay incentives, we actually funnel the funds [from these incentives] forward to the respective brokers, and we also share our funding ratios with everyone. A lot of those compensation structures are based on the funding rations themselves.”
This helps alleviate the “dog-eat-dog” mentality that some brokerages and professionals subscribe to, Buemann said.
“I would say that our primary objective is to provide a safe and transparent space for high-producing agents to collaborate and maintain their autonomy, but also have as much support as possible,” she said.
