Advances in technology have no doubt changed the ways businesses operate, and the real estate industry is no exception. 98% of all homebuyers now use the internet to shop for their homes and last year, 80% of all Millenials and Gen Xers found their home with a mobile device. Today, homebuyers can take a virtual stroll through a neighborhood across the country, or search for new listings simply by downloading an app on their phone.
But what do these changes mean for mortgage lenders?
In this blog, we’ll go over everything you need to know about leveraging technology to secure more lending opportunities.
With homebuyers increasingly relying on technology, mortgage lenders not only need to avoid losing touch with customers but also learn how to use technology to their advantage. Here are some of the top technologies today that are changing the real estate landscape.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software. CRMs have been around since the late eighties, but many have recently emerged with marketing and sales features aimed specifically at the mortgage industry. That’s why one of the go-to tools for any top-performing loan officer is a great CRM.
A CRM is a crucial piece of software that helps you keep tabs on your current customers as well as your potential ones. It stores key data points, such as names, phone numbers, addresses, purchased products or services, last point of communication, and more. Using this information, you can see who on your team was last in contact with a customer, when that was, and the nature of the conversation so your next point of engagement with them is seamless.
But the true power of CRMs lies in its automation features. You can automate workflows to, say, automatically send a follow-up email after a meeting or label a lead as interested if they open more than 3 of your marketing emails, notifying your team that it’s time to call them.
Today, there is an endless number of channels to communicate with your clients and leads. From SMS texting and live website chat tools to social media platforms and email management tools, effective and streamlined communication is crucial to simplifying the home loan process.
Social media, in particular, is emerging as a cornerstone of competitive mortgage lenders’ marketing and customer service initiatives, and loan officers who are already on platforms such as LinkedIn or Facebook have a head start on their competitors. That’s because social media is an extremely cost-effective way to disperse information, engage with your target audience, and build brand awareness.
To get started on social media, first ask yourself, “Why do I want my business to be on social media?” You need to define your goals so you can then define your success. Do you want to increase the number of your followers, or direct more conversions to your website? After you’ve decided how you’ll measure success, it’s time to develop the processes that will help you test and measure what works.
With real estate apps like Zillow and Realtor.com, house hunters can browse properties, find an agent, and get notified when a new listing hits the market— all on their pocket supercomputer. However, mobile apps like these have negative repercussions on loan officers: lenders lose 93% of mortgages from their own customer base every year to Agent referrals.
This is because many homebuyers use agent-centric ways to schedule showings—even though they’re still time-consuming, slow, and inefficient. Most importantly, 90% of buyers stay with the initial lender they were pre-approved with—so it’s crucial to capture these customers early in the homebuying process.
In addition to choosing the best delivery method(s), a big challenge (or opportunity depending on your perspective) is consistently providing meaningful and fresh content to your customers. This content can come in the form of sharing valuable information or by providing insight and recommendations of services and applications that can make life easier. No matter how or what you are sharing with your customers, you must have a pulse on their wants, desires, and concerns.
In the same way, you use Uber or Lyft to quickly find a driver to get a ride, house hunters use HomeTraq to quickly find agents to easily schedule a home showing in an average of 3-5 minutes. HomeTraq also cuts out ongoing solicitations for properties and eliminates the high-pressure sales tactics sometimes used to trap homebuyers in exclusive agency agreement before they’re ready to select a real estate agent.
Put simply, there's no hassle, no obligation, no commitment, and no solicitation with HomeTraq.
By offering your clients on-demand home showings with HomeTraq, you’re helping them purchase a home without all the hassles—and you get home shopping alerts sent right to your inbox immediately. This finally puts an end to lenders only capturing less than 0.5% of the mortgages from their own customer base each year, helping lenders win mortgage business at the lowest cost of acquisition of new mortgage business in the industry.
With half of HomeTraq home showings eventually leading to closing, HomeTraq empowers lenders to re-market to existing clients who may be currently shopping and earn new clients looking for a better way to shop for new homes. That’s why HomeTraq is quickly becoming a top mobile app for homebuyers and one of the key competitive partnerships for mortgage lenders looking to win more business.