RCN Capital's course, offered through AIME Academy, walks brokers through the first steps
For any mortgage broker or investor worth their salt, having different sources of income and ways of doing business is a huge asset in any environment – and that was a key consideration behind RCN Capital’s decision to develop a free investor financing course for brokers in association with the Association of Independent Mortgage Experts (AIME).
Offered through the AIME Academy, the course walks users through RCN’s loan products and the resources offered by the company to registered brokers, as well as the steps required to begin submitting deals to RCN.
Nate Zielinski (pictured, top left), business development coordinator at RCN, told Mortgage Professional America that the course aimed to give brokers a crash course in investment property financing and add another tool to their array of options for business growth.
“You can’t just do one thing and expect it to work in every market,” he said. “So what we’re trying to offer with this course is that alternate source of income for these brokers. Not a lot of them have dove heavily into the residential investment property financing [side].
“So we’re just trying to make them more versatile as brokers, give them more options for their clients.”
Maximum value through a quick, streamlined course
Natasha Nikulina (pictured, top right), RCN’s client education manager, developed the course alongside Zielinski. Having already put together the company’s own training course, Amplify, Nikulina was a natural fit to design its AIME Academy program, with the goal of adding value for brokers without taking up a huge amount of their time.
“The first thing for me was understanding the audience,” Nikulina explained. “The AIME broker is a level above your sort of first-time broker or anything like that. They do have certain language and vocabulary that they use – if you’re speaking to a group of people, you want the content to relate to them.
“That’s going to be the best way to get something that speaks to them, and it’ll be a little bit easier for them to understand. That was the first thing for me.”
Nikulina and Zielinski constructed the course with the purpose of putting together evergreen content that would give users a comprehensive understanding of RCN and its niche.
“We just want to make sure they understand the concepts behind what RCN does so they feel confident if they see a deal come across their desk, they can look at it and think, ‘I’m pretty sure you can help me with that,’ with confidence, without needing to know all of the nitty-gritty details, because those come with time,” Nikulina said.
Keeping things short and sweet was also a top priority. “Everyone’s busy. Not a lot of people have time to sit down for an hour to do some education,” she added. “So our course is around 25 minutes along with a decent pace, making the biggest impact with the content and build up [brokers’] confidence to be able to submit a deal.”
By taking the course, brokers whose client base is limited solely to borrowers hoping to buy their own primary residence can expand to the types of customers RCN specializes in serving – for instance, fix-and-flip clients, those looking to get into long-term rentals for passive income, or ground-up construction borrowers.
“Now they can say, ‘I actually just stumbled upon a lender, took their training course. I know a little bit about that, let’s work together,’” Zielinski said. “So being able to have that alternate source of funding at RCN Capital and have them have an alternate source of business, I think is a huge win for them.”
There are ways to go about financing your real estate investments other than conventional means.
— RCN Capital (@rcn_capital) March 22, 2023
Check out this video with Business Development Coordinator, Mitchell Zagrodnik, and read his article with Mortgage Professional America to find out how! https://t.co/dT5Cojjw2c pic.twitter.com/rIrnan59sr
Guiding brokers through the deal submission process
RCN leads with what it does best through the course, according to Zielinski, recommending to brokers that they start with specific client and deal types to get their foot in the door with the lender.
“This is where you’re going to see the most success. This is where you can hit the ground running with a loan officer at RCN Capital and really forge a relationship where they can be the most helpful to you as well,” he said.
“I would imagine there’s nothing more frustrating from a broker’s perspective than trying to work with a new lender and either sending them deals that don’t fit the lender’s guidelines, or it’s a deal that’s tough to close, or a treasury team doesn’t really see eye to eye with what the broker is trying to accomplish with the investor client. So giving them the recipe for success right off the bat is what we tried to do.”
The easily digestible course is divided into three parts, the last of which focuses on the resources RCN Capital can offer to help accelerate brokers’ success in that niche.
The course – accessible for free through AIME Academy – is a “slam dunk” for brokers, Zielinski added, with potentially enormous value in helping them expand their business.
“Next time they’re on AIME Academy, brokers should just give it a whirl and check it out,” he said. “The worst that could happen is during half of your lunch break, you just click a few buttons – but the best case is you start making thousands and thousands of dollars closing deals with RCN Capital.”
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