Hello, LOs!
About a quarter of all homes sold these days are going to first-time homebuyers. And it's the millennials who are diving head-first into the purchase market.
So let's talk about how LOs can capture those millennial leads and some apparent misconceptions out there.
"I think so many of us have this idea of what a millennial homebuyer would want and how their customer journey would look," Courtney Graham, CMO of Princeton Mortgage, said at HousingWire's Engage.Marketing event on Thursday. "And I think sometimes we're actually getting it wrong. We would maybe assume that this millennial buyer would be super tech savvy and online trying to find their lender or their realtor. But you know what the data says about millennial homebuyers? It's that how they find their lender is through their parents."
Bill Dallas, the president of Finance of America Mortgage, added that millennials are tech-savvy with search, but have trouble navigating the overall process.
"Like every other borrower, they want a human touch as they're going through the portal," Dallas said.
He believes the term "closing" is a misnomer.
"I don't know why we call it a closing – it should be an opening because you basically are starting after the transaction," Dallas said. "Every loan officer sort of talks about it and thinks about it, but they all do varying things as to how they're going to stay connected… Look, the whole business is about purchase, really, and how you stay connected with your referral sources, and how the company stays connected to that consumer as that consumer creates life events that creates opportunities for them to buy important things."
Graham said LOs often think they did a really good job for the customer or referral partner "and that feels like enough. Next time they have a transaction, I will be the one to get it. And we've seen that unfortunately, that couldn't be further from the truth. And so we always say that people do business with the people they know, like and trust and are in the flow with. And that flow piece is the most important thing we can do."
So, LOs – I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Do you typically get millennial leads through their parents? Do you find that they need lots of hand-holding? And what's your plan to stay "in the flow" with them as they – hopefully – accrue wealth and buy and sell properties? Email me at jkleimann@housingwire.com.
James Kleimann
Managing Editor, HousingWire
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