Savage Insights

Big Decisions Ahead and a New Mortgage Coach Website Coming Soon!

We are in the process of making our website much more valuable to our Mortgage Coach members and this will require me to change my strategy with my blog www.savageinsights.com.

If you are a reader of my blog, I value your opinion and want to include your feedback in our decision on which direction to go with Savage Insights. 

Here are the possible directions we are considering…

• We will make Savage Insights a password protected free blog that will require a sign-in.
• We will make Savage Insights a Mortgage Coach membership blog that will require you to be an MC member.
• I will completely discontinue Savage Insights and focus all my attention on adding value to the Mortgage Coach Community and member-only site. 

My most important goal is to provide our members with as much value possible – However I am still committed to educating the industry at the same time. I just need to pick my areas where I invest my time very carefully.

If you have an opinion and/or you value reading Savage Insights, please add your feedback and suggestions in the comments section below. 

I will be making this decision at the end of the month and one thing for sure is that the content and direction of Savage Insights will change; the questions is how much. 

Learn How Tom Griffith Uncovered an Unseen Loan Opportunity That 19 out of 20 Loan Officers Would Have Missed

“Mortgage Coach makes me think.” That’s what Tom Griffith of Eugene, Oregon said at the very beginning of this recorded conversation. When he first sat down with the couple he speaks of here, he wasn’t sure how he was going to help them. But he opened up a Total Cost Analysis report and began filling in the fields. He knew that by sticking with the process he had honed over time, the best solution would appear obvious. And it did.

PROBLEM/SOLUTION:
This client was two years post bankruptcy. The husband had been self-employed for 12 months and had not yet earned any income. Then the unthinkable happened — the wife got laid off. Prior to that fateful day, they had received a large inheritance and decided to send $100,000 to their mortgage lender to pay down their principle, expecting their payments to go down automatically. They did not. They called the bank and requested lower payments. The bank refused. Here they were, highly illiquid, no income, no savings and a mortgage payment they couldn’t afford. They had heard Tom’s radio outreach program and decided to call. They didn’t know it then, but their luck was about to turn. 

Due to their current credit situation, they had to do a no doc at 9-1/2% with less than 50% LTV to get the deal done. A 9-1/2% percent interest rate sounds illogical today. But in a side by side comparison with a 6-1/2% loan for someone with good credit, the difference over a three year period — at the time when they would be in a better financial position and could refinance again — was only $9,000, or $3,000 a year, and the lower rate would have only gotten them to their freedom point three quarters of a year earlier. Just 9 months! This information was a revelation. At this point, the conversation was no longer about the rate, but focused on what the loan could help them achieve.   

In the end, they were able to take some money out of the house, pay off two car loans and a credit card, and put some of the money they gave away back into their own hands. It was the right transaction for them at the current time.

KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS CALL:

• Tom shows you how to uncover a hidden opportunity that most loan officers would have missed;
• He explains the right time to fill out a Total Cost Analysis report;
• He shows how he easily takes the conversation away from rate and toward the freedom point;
• He dollarizes the cost over 36 months to show the benefits; and
• He details his best practices for sending out RateWatch.

Tom is doing well in today’s marketplace because of ideas like this. Other loan officers would have said let’s raise the loan amount and increase their liquidity and would have ended up with an unhappy disgruntled client that really didn’t feel good about their loan amount. Tom came up with a program that worked best for his client and then presented it in a way that they could digest it. Thanks to his creativity, Tom now has a new client and a new strategy in his arsenal of successful best practices.

Click on the player below to listen to the conversation with Tom.

or you can download it here grab the 20Mb file here

Click here to download the accompanying TCA report.

Click here to email Tom with any questions.

YOUR HOUSING MARKET SURVIVAL KIT: 5 Power Strategies for Building New Business During Today’s Market Decline

The latest S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index report is out, and the results are not pretty. The report shows that housing prices dropped in 19 out of 20 metros for the year ended February 2008. Some markets are down as much as 20%.

Click here to read the individual market results.

Now that you’ve read it, forget about it, because, this doesn’t need be negative for you. As I’ve said many times before, loan officers who know how to change and focus on the opportunities aren’t necessarily going to suffer because of this trend. The most successful loan officers have enough business to keep them going and growing for the long term and even in today’s marketplace.

But I know many of you are worried about the short term and you need to act fast. So I’ve pulled together 5 strategies that can help you put out the fires of your day-to-day challenges and grow your business:

1. Acquire new referral partners and cultivate the ones you have. There’s nothing more important to your business than your referral partners. Focus an hour a day on building referral relationships. Call five financial planners, CPAs or Realtors every day. Set one on one meetings. Hold joint seminars for consumers. Follow up via email with short five-minute videos explaining how you can help them grow their business.
   
   Watch how Linda McKinley emphasizes the value of her services to a financial planner:
   http://www.screencast.com/users/LMcKinley/folders/Jing/media/05bc7216-c1cd-4878-8c2b-8780d9c51a04
   
   Here’s a link to our report The Art of Referrals.
   
   
2. Manage your mortgages. You’ve probably got anywhere from 100 to 1,000 mortgages under management. Somewhere in that database is a goldmine of new business just waiting for you to pull it out. By managing your mortgages on a monthly basis through the RateWatch system, you’ll uncover dozens of hidden opportunities monthly.
   
   Watch Dylan Kramer follow up with a Realtor to explain his Mortgage under Management service: http://www.screencast.com/users/Dylan_Kramer/folders/Jing/media/778e7541-8b14-4547-ba24-e00442c459eb
   
   Hear how Jeremy Forcier is cranking out loan after loan and has 25 leads he hasn’t even followed up on yet:
   http://davesavage.typepad.com/my_weblog/case_study/index.html
   
   
3. Stop the bleeding of home price reduction with a Maximized Seller Buydown Strategy.
   
   Watch Scott Nicholson explain his seller buydown strategy to Realtors:
   http://www.screencast.com/users/scottnicholson1/folders/Jing/media/54ad683d-aacf-4289-8101-3d4a3756cf7b
   
   
4. Offer free/complimentary services such as credit reviews, freedom point reviews, recast reviews and divorce planning.
   
   Read how Khai McBride generates new commissions by offering a free credit review:
   http://www.themcweb.com/KhaiMcBride.pdf
   
   Watch Jonathan Klein explain his Divorce Plan: http://www.screencast.com/users/jkcdppi/folders/Jing/media/94663d38-71ae-4fa1-b0d8-dfcefb5aba1c
   
   Read my blog post about freedom point reviews:
   http://davesavage.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/10/helping
   
   To see how a Recast Point Review works first-hand, view an online video: ftp://downloads.mortgagecoach.com/Training/Strategy_Alert
   
   
5. Turn one loan into multiple loans.
   
   Learn How Richard Lovell Turned 1 Loan Into 4 Loans:
   http://davesavage.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/03/learn-how-richa.html
   
   Read how Trevor Hammond uncovers a hidden opportunity and walks away with a lifetime of commissions and referrals:
   http://davesavage.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/01/trevor-hammond.html
   
   Hear how John Weller turned 1 loan into 2:
   http://davesavage.typepad.com/my_weblog/case_study/index.html

ONE LAST TIP: After closing every loan, make sure you put them in the RateWatch system and ASK FOR REFERRALS!

Listen to How Jim McQuaig Is Using the Index Analyzer to Uncover Hidden Opportunities in Today’s Marketplace

The Mortgage Coach Index Analyzer is a critical tool in today’s volatile marketplace, and no one has maximized its benefits better than Jim McQuaig. Jim, who sells and manages mortgages in the Washington, DC area, consistently and successfully sells jumbo loans, and he uses the Index Analyzer as one of his secret weapons.

In this call, he details how, in client meetings, he uses the Index Analyzer to compare how one index is performing over another and, even more importantly, why this information matters to them.

Many loan officers wouldn’t bother starting at this level — they would simply skip over it, thinking it’s unnecessary or too complicated for their customers to understand. For Jim, the Index Analyzer is a competitive tool that helps him uncover unseen opportunities and helps his customers better understand the loan choices he recommends and why, which increases their trust, loyalty and, ultimately, their business.

In today’s market, you need to uncover hidden loan opportunities if you want to thrive. The Index Analyzer has been helping Jim do just that. 

Takeaways from this call:

• Jim shows how he uses the Index Analyzer to uncover two of the hottest unseen opportunities in today’s marketplace;
• He walks through an Index Analyzer report and shows you step-by-step how he fills one out, how he determines the benefits and drawbacks of each index in today’s market, and then how he verbally explains the results in a customer consultation;
• He explains how he finds the most appropriate prospects to use the Index Analyzer with by looking at lists of deeded property for his market;
• He explains how the Index Analyzer helps the client understand that he looked at all available options equally before making his best recommendation, solidifying the client’s trust in him; and
• He shows how to use the specific tools within the Analyzer to your advantage, such as date ranges and graphs (a link to examples of how he explains the graphs in an email to clients is included).

The Index Analyzer is a lead-generation tool that helps you uncover hidden opportunities. By analyzing different margins and indices, you can identify the most inferior strategies today and which customers are tied to them, then go after their business by offering them a better alternative mortgage product.

Click on the player below to listen to the conversation with Jim.

or you can download it here grab the 20Mb file here

Click here to see a sample of Jim’s Index Analyzer report.

Click here to see a sample of a client email in which Jim clearly and easily explains graphs he created with the Index Analyzer.

Click here to see a sample of Jim’s cold call letter to the names he got from the deed list.

To access the Index Analyzer, go to: http://www.indexanalyzer.com. Mortgage Coach members can also access it through their software home page, or through the membership center.

Any time you find a real opportunity to help homeowners, please let me know. I would appreciate hearing your ideas. Email me at dsavage@mortgagecoach.com.