Do Consumers Really Want a One-Stop Homebuying Experience?

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Go check it out right now, visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today. Hey, what is up listeners, Jeff Zimfer, your humble host for this episode of Mortgage Marketing Radio podcast. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. For tuning in so much. I appreciate you tuning in. So real quick, housekeeping. By the way, everybody who's been listening, you've been joining the private Facebook group. I thank you. I appreciate you. I am going to acknowledge and reward you for following through and taking action. Stay tuned coming soon, going live in the private Facebook group very soon with special episodes, sessions of ask me anything, so on and so forth. So before we get into the show, if you're wondering what am I talking about, I'm talking about the private Facebook group where you guys can jump in and get more access to good stuff, good content. All right. So that's what you can do there. You go to Facebook, you type in Mortgage Marketing Radio and that's how you're going to get access to private Facebook group. Make sure you answer your questions and all that kind of stuff and we'll get you going and look forward to seeing you over there on the other side. The next step is do you have a question, right? Do you have an area you need to help regarding marketing or prospecting, real estate agents, social media, digital marketing, anything, business planning, hiring and assistant. Hey, what is your top focus for Q1 2022? You got a burning question, you want answered? Do you know you can now ask me anything? That's right. You can go to askjfanything.com and leave me a question. You tap a button and you can record your question, all right? That's it. Record, tap, record and send it off to me and I'll get your question and if I select your question, you'll be thrown into a monthly contest I'll be doing once we get enough questions collected. So I need your participation. Then every month I'm going to give away some kind of a cool swag box, you know, coaching session with me and all kinds of other cool things to be included in that. But you got to ask me your question. Let me know what it is. Askjfanything.com if I select and feature your question, you'll be thrown into the monthly contest to get a really awesome, highly expensive ethical bribe package of amazing gifts and surprises. So that's what you do there. Okay. So let me get into this week's episode. It's just you and me this week and I wanted to bring this conversation to you because I came across this report. It's in my... Can you hear it right here? That's right. Yes. I'm holding this PDF document dated January 1st, 2022 and the title of it is the complete real estate experience was published by ThousandWatt Consulting, which is a consulting firm in the real estate space that does a lot of high-end cool stuff, branding, does some research and things like that. This particular study they have, which I will link it up in the show notes. So if you guys want to grab it, you can do so. But here's how I'm presenting this to you is this is a great study with talking points in it to leverage with your key realtor partners. Not everybody, right? But the realtor partners who get and understand customer experience. So what this study is is it's the home buyer attitude towards one stop shopping for real estate, mortgage, and title closing services. So the concept is one stop shop. Is that what the consumer really wants? Because we know that companies have pursued the one stop shop business model, trying to provide everything under one roof. We've seen Zillow do it, we've seen other people do it, and home services of America grew to the number one brokerage holding company in America using this strategy. So one stop shopping is not new, but they could be more relevant than ever. So I want to break down some of the key points from this study and talk briefly through this with you about how I would be leveraging this in the field as a loan officer with my referral partners. Okay. Okay. So let me take you through a couple of highlights, right? There's a lot of money flowing into real estate. We know that investment dollars are pouring into property technology, companies, FinTech companies, right, in order. The goal is to build a better real estate consumer experience through service integration. We've seen Keller Williams try to do this, right? Non-bank lenders like Rocket and Better, right? They're starting in-house discount real estate brokerages to feed their mortgage business, right? And so many companies are betting their future on a complete one stop shop real estate experience. And thousands of while consulting wanted to know if consumers are on board for the ride, how do they feel about this? And that's what this study is going to break down. So is it a huge sample size? No. It's 600 homeowners over the age of 25 in the U.S. who bought residential real estate in the past three years. So these are home buyers in the past three years. All respondents used a real estate agent to purchase and obtain a mortgage, which means we filtered out cash buyers, obviously. 57% of the respondents were male, 43% of the respondents were female. Okay. So what are some top takeaways here, okay? First and foremost, one stop shopping is very appealing to consumers with 90% of responders indicating enthusiasm and interest in this way of buying a home. The 10% of people who reject the one stop shopping proposition are very clear on why they do and their explanations, some of which will include in a moment. This can be very instructive for you. Okay. The same people who hold a favorable view of one stop shopping also value choice over speed in the transaction experience. Hmm. Interesting. Real estate agent recommendations are very powerful. Even though most people resort to having chosen a mortgage provider before selecting an agent, I'll give you the data on that in a moment. This suggests that many people are getting pre-qualified online, but ultimately take the personal guidance of their agent. For lenders, the agent channel is as strong as ever and will likely be focused on intently in 2022 as we fives, February. Large majorities of respondents to the survey are very comfortable doing business online with mortgage providers that also provide real estate, i.e. Redfin Zillow and would be perfectly willing to try a mobile base mortgage process. Overall, while this research indicates wide support for the model and increasing number of companies are providing, it does highlight areas of confusion and objection that marketers offering the solution should take time to understand and address. Okay. So those are kind of the highlights and takeaways. One thing I want to stress in there and draw your attention to is very specifically, you go back to it right here. Many people get pre-qualified online, but ultimately take the personal guidance of their agent. For lenders, the agent channel is as strong as ever and will likely be more so in 2022. So what am I saying? I'm saying agents aren't going anywhere. Agents are still a critical part of the transaction and I know there are certain crowds and people out there who play down agents who have negative associations to agents, companies selling you products and services and platforms and consumer direct lead-gen services and all that kind of just that are all about like screw the agent, leave the agent behind. And that's fine. That's all good and well. That is a business model. It's just not mine. And if we're talking about a service-based mortgage professional, ideally in a local market or in several local markets, the real estate agent as far as a source of business, one of the pillars in your business is still a critical part to that business. I'm not going to give it all that right here. Let's unpack some of the results and analysis. So here's the question from a survey. When you last bought a home, had you chosen your mortgage provider before, you began working with a real estate agent, 64% said yes, I had a lender picked out before I selected a real estate agent. 34%? No. I was working with a real estate agent before I chose a lender and 1% of the people can't recall. Okay. So let's see here. You know, the 89% of respondents, the same people who, for the most part, report already having a, let me say this again. Call it 90%. It's 89%. Let's just say, okay, 90% of the people said their agent recommended lenders, title agents or homeowners insurance companies. This suggests to us that the chosen here may mean simply making contact with someone at their bank or soliciting quotes for mortgage from marketplaces like Zillow or Lending Tree. So what I'm reading from this is the respondents to this survey. It doesn't necessarily drill down or get very specific. And what they're extrapolating from this, and the point of this last comment is that it looks like for the most part, the people who are claiming to have already chosen a lender suggests that they, it doesn't say, well, we'll get into this later about how many were qualified or not, but they had some kind of contact with the lender. But that doesn't mean they were loyal or committed to them, right? Oh, yeah, yeah, I chose a lender. I fell out an app online or I did whatever, right? Hmm. Next question. When you bought your home, did a real estate agent recommend mortgage, lender, title, etc. 88%. Yes, 11% no. Despite respondents pre agent mortgage shopping, nearly half of all agents who made recommendations volunteered these recommendations. In other words, while agents like to encounter buyers who already have been pre qualified for a mortgage, they are perhaps even more strongly inclined to try and assemble their team around their deal in order to ensure a successful outcome getting to the closing table. Hmm. So what does that say? That's saying a good agent, right, still wants iron-fisted client control, wants to, as much as possible, control certainty of close. And depending on what the buyer comes to the table with as a pre approved, right, mortgage, they are still trying to align those buyers with their preferred partners in a strong percentage of the cases. Now, this gets even more telling, stay with me here. The next question. Did you ask for these recommendations or did your agent volunteer them? 50% asked the agent for recommendations. It's split right down the middle, and 50% say my agent volunteered them. Now check this out. Here's where it gets really interesting. The agent recommendations carry a lot of weight, half of respondents claimed to have used all of the service providers recommended by the agent. Only 3% said they didn't use any 44% said they used some, but not all of the recommended providers. Folks, the real estate agent recommendations carry a lot of weight. My question is, are you getting recommended? I know many of you are. Are you dealing with the three-card approach, right? Are you dealing with an agent who, when somebody comes to them with a pre approval, just says, okay, that's great. Cool. Let me take a look at it. They're not asking their preferred lenders, you, to get a second opinion. Very interesting, very interesting. We're going to continue to get into this, okay? Question 4. Did you use the mortgage title and homeowners insurance providers or agent recommended? 52%. Yes, I used all of them. 62% used all of them. Nearly 60% of respondents indicated their agent worked at a company with its own mortgage company. It's a matter of fact, it says right here, did the real estate company or agent worked at have its own mortgage company, 60% said, yes, it did, 30% said no, it didn't, 10%, I can't recall. Now to the heart of the matter. There's one stop shopping appeal to these recent home buyers in a word, yes, half said that it definitely seems like a better way to buy a home. Another 39% said that they see some benefit to this. Only 11% are wary or a hard no. Hey, what about those people with reservations, right? They were asked to explain themselves and their response is worthy of you taking note. Now think about this, why I'm going through this is should have said this at the beginning as well, but I'm going to be talking about like how this relates to number one, your customer experience, the questions you ask clients when you're engaging with them, particularly when they're referred by your realtor partners. This is relevant for you to having a conversation with your real estate agents about how to create a less friction in the handoff, less friction in the transaction. This is also an opportunity for you to better train your real estate agents. How to tee you up? How to convey confidence and trust and mitigate any perceived risk or minimize reservations that the client may have because the agent's referring you. So look at some of these responses that are lurking beneath the surface that you should really be aware of that these are underneath the surface when people are either, even if they're saying yes, I'm open to your recommendation of which 50% went for it. But then there's the ones who are apprehensive about it. And by the way, it's a good practice to make sure you address any potential roadblocks, unspoken questions and things like that underneath the surface, which always exist. So some characteristic responses, I don't like someone being the only hand in the cookie jar. From interviewing the survey respondents, when it came to, right, referring the agents pervert providers, monopolizing the process, it seems like a way to ensure that you can charge higher rates and no one would know because who researches the value of these things. Let me ask you right now, is there a place for you to in your customer experience, dialoguing and scripting, and here's why we're different. Here's what makes us better. Here's how we do things differently at ABC mortgage company, especially in the context of you getting the referral from the real estate. So let me explain. So you got to referral from Sally over at remax. Well, congratulations, right? Sally at Remax is one of the most professional real estate agents. She's been around for 17 years. She cares about her clients, you know, on and on, you just edify the heck out of your partner, right? Why Sally at Remax is chosen to work with us is because, right? We have a fiduciary responsibility to both you and her in that, right? Our number one goal is to fulfill the American dream, to help buyers, right? Have a transparent transaction so that they can feel confident about the largest investment and largest debt they'll likely hold in their entire life. That's completely off the top of my head. Unscripting around that though, some context to put around that, to make sure that, you know, it, I'm not saying you ask the person, hey, do you have any reservations because we referred you? No, you just simply say, that's fantastic. Let me provide some certainty and reinforcement around that. All right, some other quotes people had about this, hey, I want to shop for the best rate myself. I'm concerned the lender is not competing on rate. Are those talking points right there? It comes to, obviously you get the question all the time about, hey, what's your rate? Do you have the best rate? So let me, if I could, Mr. Mrs. Client, now that we've established, you know, the working relationship between Sally at Remax and myself, if you don't mind, could I take a moment and briefly explain how interest rates work? It goes on to say, seems like they would have their best interests in mind, not mine. Let me say that again, seems like they would have their best interests in mind, in mind, not my own. So think about it. Referrals you get from a real estate agent. How many times are they questioning it? How many times is there some level of uncertainty underneath the surface? They don't bring it up. Hmm. Well, listen, I can understand that you might have some reservations about the, you know, Sally and I working together and I just really, really wanted to just bring to the surface, you know, how we do work and make sure that our number one goal between us and the transaction is transparency. And what that means for us is we will never, right, hide fees. We will never do this. We will never do this. You will always be updated and notified. This is our schedule. We will have these regular calls and updates from my team, et cetera, et cetera, right? Guys, go and have a saying here, you architect your customer experience and your first initial call to make sure that you're quilling any potential reservations, concerns that are not mentioned. Hmm. Okay. As a whole, however, the large majority who told 1000 watt during the survey that they find one stop shopping attractive, they don't seem to recognize the trade off between convenience and choice. When asked if they value speed or choice more in the mortgage process, more than two thirds chose choice. This seems to imply that most people don't immediately understand that one stop shopping limits choice. Hmm. Here's an interesting question from the survey. Generally speaking, when it comes to getting a mortgage, do you prefer more choice and the possibility of lowest rate or simplicity and speed, 64% more choice. I want more options that would prefer to find them on my own, even if it takes longer. Hmm. 33% said faster results. I want to get the transaction done as quickly as possible and would prefer to have a one stop shopping experience, 33% of these respondents. You know, you might be able to uncover something like this with a question of what's most important to you in the mortgage process. Give them some options. I don't know that you can give them choice depending on who you are listening if you are not a broker, right? However, what you could do is use that in the context of giving them a choice of loans to choose from, particularly if you're a mortgage coach user, and be a highway, right? You can allow people to present to them three options. So I'm just curious, Mr. Smith, what's most important to you in getting a mortgage? Is it choice, right? You want to have some options for which a loan program best fits your unique situation, or is it just speed? You want to get through the transaction done as quickly as possible. Now I know both could be important, right? Again, I'm just kind of spit-pulling here. I have to top my mind. I'm trying to give you some pieces of information for you to use when you're trying to determine how do you differentiate yourself when so often people are coming to you with the frame of price? And of course, the realtor isn't setting you up in a lot of cases effectively, but again, that's a coaching opportunity for you. Let's look at sources of mortgage, and again, this isn't a huge sample audience. So take it with a grain of salt, but where did you get your mortgage, 40% through the place I bank, bank or credit union, 18% through another bank or credit union through a mortgage broker, 21%, 7%, I use a mortgage company that was not a bank, 13%. Would they consider other options from places like Zillow and Redfield familiar names? Most of them said yes, only 10% said no, 47% said yes, 38% said maybe. Are they aware of rocket mortgage, the largest non-bank lender? Most definitely. Have you heard of rocket mortgage? Yes, 88%. And what about a mobile first mortgage experience? Are people on board? To get at this, we asked if rockets slogan from a few years ago, push button, get mortgage. We asked if that resonated, 60% said they are game. Sounds great to me, I would try this. 32% said I might be interested, but I have reservations. Only 8% said I don't like or trust the idea of getting a mortgage entirely online. Finally, they asked respondents how much they trust, how much trust they have in the mortgage industry and process. And this is remarkable when you consider 10, 15 years ago, right, the great session, the financial market meltdowns, the subprime loan, debacle, all that that happened around 2008, time seems to perhaps have absolved the mortgage industry of its sins. And so here's what they said, generally speaking, what is your level of trust in the mortgage industry process, 34% said very high, 26% said high. So that's pretty solid, right? Sounds like 60% said high or very, you know, in that one bucket, 33% said moderate. I have concerns, but overall, I think the way thing I think that doesn't make any sense. I think the way things are works for most people, oh, got it, all right. And then only 6% said low, I have very little trust in the mortgage process. Thing is, you don't know. And again, it comes back to questions. And ask yourself, or may want to ask your clients, hey, have you gotten a mortgage before? Yeah, what was your experience like? Tell me, tell me about your experience. What was it like? Right? You want to listen to it. Because when they tell you what their experience was like, you're going to hear their opinions and their emotions and feelings attached to that. And you want to listen for those key words of like, either it was great, it was smooth, great. Where did you get that mortgage from? Fantastic. Okay. Yeah, it wasn't so great. Really? Where did you get that from? Tell me what stands out for you? Right? They're indifferent, okay? So some interesting data here. And so I think this is, you know, I wanted to share this with you different informational purposes. And hopefully this gives you some thoughts to consider. Number one, number two, use this in the context of, you know, creating a intake process with your clients to increase your conversion rates. I mean, can you, is there always room for increasing conversions? I think so. I think you have to factor that into your sales process and so forth, right? And cost benefit analysis. But I think bottom line, most of you that I talked to could, could use an increase in conversions, converting more clients to actual, sorry, more prospects, more leads to clients. And particularly when they're coming from your referral partner. So I'll close out by saying this is that I would be using this document. I would be getting it from the show notes, downloading it, the link and reading through it yourself. And then highlighting a couple areas within there that you wanted to use as talking points with your real estate agents. Oh, by the way, this could also be a social media post for you. You do a video. You take one of these, you know, survey results and you just post it out there and you ask, hey, what do you think? According to a recent survey, right? X amount of people said this wrote one stop shopping, right? Did the agent recommend Lenders? Hey, I'm just curious followers on Instagram on whatever, right? The last time you bought a house. Did the agent recommend Lenders titled et cetera to you, you know, create a poll? Yes. No. Great way for you to drive social engagement. But most importantly for me, I want to use these as talking points with my real estate agent referral partners because this will give me the baseline for, first of all, sharing some data from with them that they're going to be appreciative of and just, you know, so for those that, I think the one line in there about, you know, that even though people came with a pre-approval, which we hear a lot today, still the majority, the real estate agent has a lot of weight and 50% of the people are choosing the agent's recommendation even when they have a pre-approval in hand, right? Whatever that means into the study, which they didn't actually specifically detail, but they did reference the term pre-approval. However, I would be asking my agents, so look, are you seeing age, are you seeing people come to you with pre-approvals? Yes. Great. And yet do you make recommendations? Yes. How many of those times, what percentage of the time does the people take the recommendation you make? Oh, we'll get the real data. Oh, it's 50%. Oh, it's whatever. I'm not sure. Well, what could we do, right, to quell some of these concerns that people have, right, to address some of these issues and to create more trust, to create higher conversion ratios, to create greater referrals down the road? I think that would be a very interesting conversation for you to have with your real estate agents. I think they would be grateful to you for it. I think it will help you build deeper, better relationships with them and ultimately get more referrals, particularly when you talk to them about, you know, my number one goal working with you as my referral partner is to create a referable transaction. Is to create the best possible consumer experience I can? Is to establish trust with our mutual clients? And I'd like to talk through a couple of these to see, you know, what stands out for you and how can we do this more effectively together? And I know the first and easiest area of the low hanging fruit for you to work on is the handoff of the referral from agent to you, the introduction of you, their lender to their client and making that more efficient, whether that's using some mobile app technology, or, you know, structuring a phone call that goes out from the agent to the lender that sets you up, right, with a proper edification and then you do the same to them. I would just encourage you to think about, by the way, have you ever surveyed your clients post-close or some at some point during the transaction transaction? So I'd like to get your feedback, Mr. Mrs. Client, right, our business is largely built on referrals and we want to make sure that we're creating a customer experience that's second and none. One of the ways we do that is ask for feedback. What would be, okay, if we asked you a couple of questions about what it's like working with the ABC team about, okay, so just describe for me the experience of you getting introduced to us from Sally at Remax. How did you feel about that process? Was it smooth, easy, was it confusing? Did you feel there was a breakdown along the way? Are there any areas that could be improved? I mean, hire somebody to do this and ask these questions, right? Offer rewards to do it or just start to pay attention and notice and ask people along the way. See if, here's the thing, see if there's confusion, see if there's uncertainty from the hand off from the real estate agent to you. See if there's a challenging connecting with them and getting them on the phone. See if there's a delay and then them getting back to you, an unusual abnormal delay. Therein lies the opportunity and the holes, the gaps in that process of the agent handing off referrals to you. So that's that. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Love to get your feedback on this and if you want to leave your feedback, go to Ask Jeff Anything, right? ASK, GE-O-F-F, anything and you can leave your voice, you can leave me a message, a question there, but just don't take too long, get right to it, I think the time limit is two minutes or something like that. And of course, jump into the Facebook group there if you want to pose a question in their mortgage marketing radio, Facebook group and that's it, I look forward to seeing you on the next one. Bye for now. Hey guys, what's up real quick? You've heard about the mortgage marketing pro membership before and I just want to quickly remind you of that you're in a place in your business where you simply need more purchased loans. You need to fill your pipeline with purchase business. Let's just face it, agents are still a solid pillar of business and sources of purchase business for you. Well, good news, our mortgage marketing pro membership helps loan officers like you close more loans without the hassle of chasing agents or cold calling. None for you agent classes, expert training videos, a marketing automation platform that automates the entire process for you, everything you need to build your personal brand in your local market, attracting convert agents into referral partners, plus done for you proven marketing materials and plug and play content to make promoting your class, getting agents, butts and seats, partnering with affiliates, real easy, but that's not all. You'll also get access to our weekly mastermind calls with top LOs, authors, speakers and coaches to learn the best strategies to grow your business right now in today's market and as an extra bonus for limited time for all new members, you'll get access to a database of 200 agents in your local market that have closed anywhere to from eight to 50 transactions in the last 12 months. 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