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How Loan Officers Can Avoid the Job Change Mistake

Last year, 44% of all loan officers changed companies. That’s a lot of loan officers. In my humble opinion, I think they should have read this blog post before they made the move (wink). I’ve always shied away from this topic, but I’ve realized I’m doing people a big disservice by avoiding it. I sat…

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How to Warm Up Your Cold Calls to Realtors

Most loan officers experience some trepidation when it comes to making cold calls. But what if you could make warm and fuzzy calls instead of cold ones? Would that help alleviate your reluctance to pick up that phone? Kristen Simpson is one of our coaches who does strategy calls with loan officers. She’s fantastic at…

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How Loan Officers Can Thrive in Today’s Challenging Market

When people face challenging times, the natural human response is to freeze or flee. And loan officers are definitely facing some challenging times right now. I sat down recently with my partner, Ralph Watkins, to talk about how to persevere through the changes in today’s market. Ralph is the one who got me into the…

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4 Common Questions Loan Officers Ask (and Some Answers)

I get a lot of great questions from my fellow loan officers, and I love to share what I’ve learned from my own experience over two decades in the mortgage business. Hopefully these answers might help you out as well. Let’s dive in! Question #1: I’m Overwhelmed At Work. What Do I Do? When I…

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5 Tools You Need in a Rapidly Increasing Rate Environment

Rates are on the rise. Of course we all knew this would happen. It’s the nature of the beast. But it doesn’t mean we feel prepared to face this new (and often scary) environment we find ourselves in right now. I recently sat down with my good friend Steve Kyles to talk about the tools…

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Shoppers Are Going to Shop—and You Don’t Need to Stop Them

Rate shoppers. They’re the bane of our existence as loan officers, right? How do we handle them? How can we keep them from shopping? How do we reel them back in once they start to shop around? The short answer: we don’t. When it comes to rate shoppers, I’d like to offer a different perspective….

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How to Get Your Offers Accepted In a Competitive Market

Inquiring loan officers want to know: in a competitive market with multiple offers on properties, how do you get your client’s offer accepted?  I sat down recently with my friend, Kei Kullberg, in New York’s Hudson Valley to talk about just that. Kei and I met after he started listening to my podcast from his…

The Simple 3-Step Formula Loan Officers Need to be Following Right Now
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The Simple 3-Step Formula Loan Officers Need to be Following Right Now

The mortgage industry has definitely made a shift in the past few months from a refinance market to a purchase market. So what does that mean for your mortgage business? Well, if you’re like my branch, we did 68% purchase and 32% refinance last year, so things aren’t going to change much for us. But…

5 Things You May Need to Change to Get Even Better Results Going Forward
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5 Things You May Need to Change to Get Even Better Results Going Forward

There’s never a bad time for reflection, to evaluate the things you’re doing as a loan officer and see if you’re doing your absolute best. Is there anything you could change that would give you even better results in the year ahead? I made a list of five reflection questions to ask yourself. These are…

The 3 Activities You Want to Focus On Right Now
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The 3 Activities You Want to Focus On Right Now

My friend Tammy Saul just texted me yesterday and said, “Carl, I’ve got to tell you, I just had my best week ever in the mortgage industry. I got 17 new purchase deals last week.” Not last month, last week.  This is a really big deal. Why? Because there’s a lot going on in our…