71: How Many Mortgages Can One Broker Fund?

Welcome to the 10 Loans a Month podcast, where mortgage brokers become business owners. And now, your host, Scott Peckford.

Hey, Broker Nation. Welcome to All of Mortgage Brokering Podcast. I'm doing my 10 Loans a Month series. This is a tactical podcast we produce every week. I'm your host, Scott Peckford. And so let's talk about this topic of how many mortgages can one mortgage broker fund. And it comes up frequently in our Facebook group.

And I've tackled it a few different ways. And as I thought about this more, I thought, you know what, there are four main factors that determine how many mortgages a broker can actually fund in a month. And I will jump into those. So the first is lead, the lead types. The second is loan types. The third is processed and the fourth is lenders. So let's talk about lead type first. So the source of the leads is going to make a big difference. So, for example, I know people who.

I do a lot of online lead gen and out of, you know, 100 leads that they get, they'll fund, you know, five mortgages. That's a lot of conversations to have to sift people down. And yes, there's software you can use and auto follow up, but it is a lot different than getting a referral. from somebody who's trusted or a past client as you know if you have a past client your funding ratio is much higher

And so the lead source really matters. And so you can't compare the two. Somebody could be feeling stressed out and it could be because they have lower quality leads. It could be that the referral source doesn't.

properly sell you when they refer you. And so the lead source really, really matters. And then that of course will affect the quality of the lead. So the two key things there are source, where does it come from? Is it a trusted referral? Is it a past client? Is it an online lead? You know, one of our coaches, Dustin. he buys online leads that are sold to five or six people. Well, that's a lot more calls that he needs to make.

And the funding ratio is much lower. And it means it takes more time per file, right? Because you're spending time actually getting the lead. The other thing to think about is if you have a consistent source of leads, the reason most people stall in their mortgage business, and usually it's around five mortgages a month. closed start to create a lot of paperwork and you need to get some help is because they can't prospect and so if you don't have to prospect

You can fund a lot more mortgages. Imagine like an underwriter working at a lender. They can fund a lot more mortgages in a month than you because they don't have to go look for files. So if you don't have to look for files, that makes a big difference. So the source of those leads, the quality, and then the quantity, meaning that if you have to look for.

If you've got to go look for more leads, it's going to affect how many you can fund in a month. That's the first thing. The second is loan type. So are they all the same? So the more homogenous. or the more similar they are the easier it is for you to fund more mortgages so if you have all say prime loans

Very easy. If you start getting into subprime where every loan is like a snowflake and they're different or alternative lending, they can take a bit more time. You don't know if you're into construction loans or even if you allow. construction loans so some brokers won't even do them because they're just too time consuming and they take up too much time if you use all that time that you could be working on another file so first is lead

Lead type is going to make a difference, type and quality. The second is loan types that you actually will do. The third thing that will affect your ability for how many mortgages you can fund in a month, and I'll give you some examples at the end of this actually of brokers and a range of how many mortgages they fund a month, but process. So what I mean by process, do you have a no go list? So really important. Anybody who's funding a lot of mortgages has a no go list.

which means that there's client types they say no to fast. I always say this, you say no to grow. And so if you have a very specific type of client that you want to work with and some of the best, you know, Ryan Wiley, for example, on the first discovery call, he's trying to figure out ways to say no to that client. Same with Jim Trelucas.

He does a lot of mortgages and he's trying to figure out how is this person not going to be a fit and should I just tell them to go away? So I save as little time as humanly possible. So important for you to think about building a no-go list if you don't have one. The second is, do you have a clearly defined process when it comes to process that you do?

Do not deviate from. So for example, my business partner, Jules, if you come to her with an offer and she hasn't pre-approved you, she's like, I'm not helping you. Like literally, like if I haven't pre-approved you before, I'm not throwing you into my loan process.

creating all kinds of havoc because you didn't want to get pre-approved in advance. Sorry, I don't have time to help you. So she doesn't take on those, you know, 911 calls. She's more like a booked appointments only. And so if you have a defined process and then you don't deviate from it. then you're going to be able to fund more loans. A lot of people will break their process because they try to make it easy for every client, but makes it really hard for you.

And so you do need to have a very clearly defined process, really important to map your customer journey, get that dialed in so that you know exactly how you want to serve your clients. And those are two of the big areas when it comes to process that you need to think about. So having a no-go list and a clearly defined process that you do not deviate from. One of the ways I can test how much you deviate is

Or if you can think about this, think about a client that was a family or friend that you were like, no problem, you break your process because they're a family or friend, and it always turns into a nightmare. It's like, oh my gosh, why did I not follow my regular process? This is my friend, my family, and it's a worse experience than if I just would have stuck to it. I always say you drive the bus as a mortgage broker.

The client can tell you where they want to go. That's excellent. No problem. We'll work together if we want to go, but I'm driving. And if you grab the steering wheel, I'm going to let you off the bus immediately. I'm not going to let you drive because if I let the client drive, they will crash the bus and they'll blame you.

every single time so first leads remember lead type and quality is going to make a difference in your number of loans loan types so if there are lots of types or complex process and then lenders so How many lenders do you work with? And actually, the fewer, the better if you want efficiency. So this may sound counterintuitive. A mortgage broker should have lots of options. Some of the most prolific.

Productive mortgage brokers, if you were actually to look at their book of business, is very highly concentrated in a small number of lenders. Jim Trulucas, for example, who's probably this example of the most efficient mortgage broker that I've ever met. probably 90 some percent of his business will fit within four lenders. That's it. He knows their policies cold. He knows everything about them. It's efficient for him. He's got great relationships with his underwriters on the other side.

and so if you look at you work with 12 15 you know 20 different lenders you actually lose efficiency for you and for them this is why you have a no-go list because if you're like these are my four favorite lenders we're really good at you know x type of client if you don't fit that i'm not going to help you because

If I use one of my lenders for that, it's not going to be great for you or it's not a great experience. It's not worth doing. So it's really important if you want to increase efficiency to have fewer lender partners that you go deeper with. And plus, they give you more exceptions, right? Like they're going to give you more love because you're giving them more volume.

So a couple examples of this. So why can Jim Trelucas fund 250 mortgages a year and it seemed like a Superman? It's because he does not have to look for leads. He's got a large database, 7,000 past clients. He gets dozens of leads a day, reach out to him.

He puts a filter in place. Hey, is this somebody you want to work with? I'm going to spend seven minutes with you. If you don't want to follow my process, you're off my bus. I'm letting you go. All of his clients are prime clients. They're not subprime. He's not doing construction stuff. And then he works with a small number of lenders that increases his efficiency so that he can get more done quicker.

So most people don't have that business model. Ryan Wiley is another one of our coaches in our 10 loans a month academy. He probably do about 160, 170 mortgages a year. And he's got a no-go list. That's like, I think 15 or 20 things on that list. It's like, I'm not doing any of this stuff. And so, again, his first call, he'll do 160, 170 files a year. He's got a part time assistant that works 20 hours a week and he works about 30 hours a week.

how does he do it is he superhuman no he's not i mean he's smart dude no question but what he does is he says okay i'm only going to work with this type of client I'm going to say no to a lot of clients that I'm not a good fit for. And then he set up marketing funnels on the front end and a good client database so that he's using automation for prospecting.

right so that would be another example but if you're a regular broker and you don't have all this stuff dialed in you don't have a defined customer journey if you don't have a no-go list if you are using 10 different lenders and you're doing six different file types you're probably going to find at about five plus mortgages funded a month unless you have a strong lead sources that are

continually feeding you and you don't have to go find more business somewhere between five to ten mortgages you're going to cap out and it's because the paperwork that you're going to have to generate the due for each of those files will limit your prospecting time hopefully find that helpful fun question to start to analyze and think about like

okay, like why is one person seem to be more productive than another? And when you dive into the data and the information, you realize, okay, well, they're doing things different, obviously. So if you're listening to this and you want to find out how we can help you increase your business, get coached by guys like Jim and Ryan and some of them.

other amazing coaches, go to 10moansamonth.com. You can get on the wait list. We're currently full and closed, but we open up periodically when we have more spots and you can get coached to do some of this in your business. Thanks so much for listening. I will see you in the next episode. This is an I love mortgage brokering production.