đź’Ż How to compete with Zillow! - The Letter X
Feb 15, 2021 8:09 pm
THE LETTER X
MONDAY IS FOR WINNERS
ISSUE #40
Here is the 100% truth about how you compete with Zillow. You don’t.
You are not going to compete against Zillow just like Uncle Rico is not going to compete for a starting QB job in the NFL.
My friends, that ship has sailed and it sailed a loooong time ago. Per usual the industry, at large, did nothing but scoff and be 100% wrong about the outside disruption that Zillow would cause.
This is why we need to stop listening to personalities and friggin influencers, are start listening to the new experts, thought leaders, and change agents. They aren’t the same.
Now, these same “personalities” want to talk about Zillow buying ShowingTime and write articles about agents being “concerned about Zillow” and all of this clickbait crap (yes I am heated).
The industry pundits are focusing on the wrong conversation, as usual, and are putting their thoughts behind the challenge instead of the solution.
“But Frazier, you just said you don’t compete against Zillow.” Yes, not in the traditional sense. For example, you nor anyone else in this industry is going to get over 40 million unique monthly visitors to their website. Nor are you going to be #1 in your category, #15 in the US, or #54 Globally.
You don’t bring a knife to a gunfight, instead, you change the battlefield altogether.
You don’t compete against Zillow, you simply work to show the consumer that you, the local expert, are the best option. You have to work on being a professional in our industry the way a Doctor or Lawyer work to be a professional in theirs.
Win local! Stop sending your clients there, stop paying them for leads, stop putting your reviews there. Yes, I get that may be the way you get business, but it will also be your undoing at some point in the not to distant future. I will never tell someone not to do something that is putting food on your table but please don’t kid yourself about the long-term consequences of doing so.
This is the only way you will “compete” against the attention monster that is Zillow. End of rant.
With that, LFG with this week’s edition of TLX!
Event Announcement
Only 40 seats left!
We are quickly reaching the end after opening up the Broker Success Summit on Friday.
We are bringing in some of the best brokers, experts, coaches, and speakers to mastermind with you during this 3-day event. There will be a ton of value and will be focused on those that want to make 2021 their best year ever!
This will be an in-person event with very limited seats so make sure you get your tickets today!.
Say Yes Every Day
Laura Brandao - President of AFR Wholesale
This week Say YES to history! There’s a great song in the Broadway play Hamilton that says, Look around, look around at how lucky we are to be alive right now, Look around, look around. Every day we are making history and the question is, what is your legacy that you will leave behind? As we pay homage to our Presidents today let us all be thankful to be alive in such an amazing time and look to make a positive impact on the history we are making right now!
Mortgage Rate X
MBS X
Diana Bajramovic of MBS Highway
10-Year Treasury Note Auction
On Wednesday there was a 10-Year Treasury Note auction that had below average demand, but foreign countries came in and bought with both hands, helping to lower 10-Year yields. Foreign participation is important as if we were to purchase foreign goods, the purchasing of the goods in their currency helps to strengthen their currency and weaken ours. This will cause our exports to look more attractive and foreign exports to look less attractive. What these foreign countries could do is give this money back to us, but rather than purchasing our goods, they purchase our debt. In a way, this helps. But this neutralizes the difference in currency by keeping our currency a bit stronger and helps their exports. Overall, this auction helped ease some of the pressure we’ve been seeing in the bond market.
Jerome Powell on the Job Market
Jerome Powell must have been watching our Morning Update because he said we’ve been saying in the last week. Due to misclassification, it’s more likely that the unemployment rate is not at 6.3%, rather it is more toward 10%. Keeping this in mind, it’s also likely that the Fed is not planning on hiking rates for a while, but instead, they would continue Quantitative Easing and purchasing Mortgage Backed Securities. By not hiking rates, it gives them the green light for Yield Curve Control, as we spoke about last week.
Continue to stay up to date with us on MBS Highway.
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Monday Mortgage Grind!
Mr. Thank You! - Check out this interview on the Next Level Loan Officers Podcast with John Israel where they talk about the power of showing appreciation. Here are some takeaways.
- Lack of appreciation is the reason most partnerships and relationships fall apart.
- When you have conversations with intent you become relevant to your audience.
- You become more competitive when you become more human.
Mortgage Rates Stuck in Neutral Amid Economic Uncertainty - With irresolution swirling around the economy and the pandemic recovery, mortgage rates barely budged. According to the latest data released Thursday by Freddie Mac, the 30-year fixed-rate average remained unchanged for the third consecutive week at 2.73 percent with an average 0.7 point.
Lender IPO Winner - Online retail lender loanDepot raised just $54 million by offering 3.9 million shares at $14 on Thursday, far below the range of $19 to $21 it initially had sought...BUT the market has spoken and is bullish on LDI as the stock currently sits at $31 (Going high as $39). The price and rally currently make LDI the early stock price winner compared to UWMC ($9), HMPT ($13), and RKT ($20).
Opinion: Be An Advisor - There is a lot of regret going around for people who rushed to buy a house in this market. The common theme is not doing their due diligence, waving inspections, and not having an ADVISOR help them be successful. Sometimes that means advising them NOT to get a mortgage or buy a specific house. That may run counter to what you believe, but I believe in Lives, not Loans, and that being a true professional in this space will put you above the fold and on the way for legacy business.
Where is the inflation? - U.S. housing prices have finally eclipsed their peak from 2005 in the years leading up to the Great Recession. Note that at the beginning of 2021, we said real estate was entering the year in a "massive bubble".
What is the benefit of A.I. in the RE space? - The endless ongoing adoption of AI and automation technologies is transforming the way people work and result in an uproar, especially in industries like real estate, finance, and banking.
The combination of the $900 billion support package signed by President Trump in December, the virtual certainty of another $1.9 trillion Democratic aid package, the probability of a large infrastructure/stimulus bill in February, and the Fed’s desire to keep rates artificially low, along with increased household spending due to high savings rates from prolonged pent-up demand, raises inflationary concerns. The Fed may have to work very hard to repress yields.
The number of help-wanted ads is now 0.7% higher than its pre-pandemic level a year ago. During the worst of the pandemic, the difference was -39%. Relatedly, the number of job openings hit 6.646 million in 12/20, exceeding the 6.552 million in 12/19, also the first time the Y-o-Y difference has been positive since Sars-Cov-2. However, the number of December unemployed totaled 10.7 million, a year ago just 5.844 million.
Had the current minimum wage of $7.25/hour increased annually by the rate of inflation it would now be $9/hour. Since the minimum wage was adopted in 1938, its inflation-adjusted value peaked in 1968 when it became $1.60/hour, about $12 today. Raising it to $15/hour would lift 900,000 out of poverty, give raises to up to 27 million workers, but 1.4 million would become unemployed and growth would be modestly hurt.
The labor market may, emphasis on “may”, be turning a corner! After deteriorating noticeably in December and early January, the number of workers filing for first-time unemployment claims, a proxy for layoffs, eased for the third straight week to a still staggeringly high 779,000, their best level since November but four times their pre-pandemic rate. Moreover, January net job growth was 49,000, following a decline of 227,000 in December.
Have you joined the Mortgage X Mastermind yet? It is our FREE Facebook Group.
The Vieaux
Brian Vieaux - President of FinLocker
Planning Your Pivot: Learning From 2020 To Prepare For 2021
Many of the mortgage lenders and originators who successfully transformed their business almost overnight in March 2020 had a record year in 2020.
2021 is expected to be another year of change. Now is the time to identify what strategies elevated your business in 2020 and prepare to pivot to 2021.
Will Teams and Zoom meetings replace more of your face-to-face meetings long term?
Did electronic document signing prove popular with your buyers?
Permanently offering both electronic or in-person meetings and document signing to clients will demonstrate that you value their time and understand their preferred communication method.
How will you pivot to grow and nurture your pipeline in 2021?
Research indicates that many first-time homebuyers still prefer to work with a local lender. But now that younger borrowers are spending even more time online and don't need to walk into a branch, how will you pivot to generate new leads?
Whether from real estate agents or past clients, referrals have always provided a significant source of an originator's leads. Social media is an easy way to stay connected with past clients and offers a low-cost solution to attract new leads. How will you pivot your marketing strategy to stay top of mind and nurture the prospective homebuyers while they get mortgage-ready?
Adopting a high tech and high touch approach could be the way to pivot your business in 2021. FinLocker helps originators reduce the friction of mortgage preparation and the mortgage application process for originators by giving borrowers the tools to control their mortgage preparation.
The borrower uses the FinLocker tools to save their down payment and closing costs, reduces debt, and improve their credit. When a borrower is confident they are mortgage-ready, they can take a short readiness assessment inside the app and decide, based on the results, if they meet the qualifications to proceed with their mortgage application and notify their originator of this decision from the app.
FinLocker reduces the friction often associated with document collection because the borrower can securely upload and save their personal and financial documents to the app, then share those documents directly with their lender directly from the app. The information is delivered to the lender as a MISMO file, which can be transferred directly to the originator's LOS for processing.
Successful mortgage originators are personable, resilient, and creatively adapt to market fluctuations. To be successful in 2021 and beyond, originators need to provide the younger generations of homebuyers with high tech tools and solutions they need for mortgage prep and complements your personalized communication.
Empower Hour
Are you thinking above the line? Adopting the power of intention
Bronwyn Morrissey - CMB | AMP | CPC
Industry Professional to Watch!
Andres Munar - Co-Founder & MLO @ Keystone Alliance
Make sure you tell Andres that you saw him in The Letter X!
The Edumarketer
Ginger Bell - Author, Speaker, and found of Edumarketing
Make Your Message Crystal Clear
Creating great content begins by knowing your audience. Although the importance of knowing your audience and narrowing down a target market is critical, clearly defining your message is just as important. In other words, don’t try to cram everything into a single animated explainer video.
Create Tailored Videos
We offer a ton of programs in the mortgage industry. It’s not just one widget. So, you’ll need different videos for each of these. For example, you might need:
· An explainer video to give basic consumer application process
· A more complex video overview of VA Home Loan Benefit qualifications
· A powerful TED Talk-type of message from your CEO
Don’t try to explain what your company does, what programs you offer and the great service you provide all in the same video.
Take the time to create a tailored video with a specific message and a specific goal. When you do this it will be much more effective.
The best way to do this is to write down your audience. For example, you have people who want to buy a home and people who want to refinance a home. In the people who want to buy a home segment, you have people who have never bought a home, want to buy a second home, want to buy an investment property, want to buy a condo, want to buy using their VA entitlement. You get the picture. Always get crystal clear on your audience. This doesn’t mean you have to specialize in just one area, this means, you just need to have a clear message in that one video or article.
Think about what questions this type of person may have. If you don’t know, you can search online to see what types of questions are being asked. The website, Answer the Public allows you to type in a word or question and it will deliver to you exactly what phrases or keywords that are being searched. You can use those queries to create content answering those questions.
Write First – Shoot Second
You wouldn’t go on vacation without knowing where you are going, making plans, visiting the place online and maybe even creating an entire itinerary. Same holds true for shooting video. Have a plan! This means that you should write out your content before you shoot your video. Even if it is just an outline. This will help you stay on topic. I like using the top three things you should know about….
This way you stay focused and only answer those three things. Shorter content delivered over time is much more effective than a long article. People’s attention spans are short, so stay tight on your message and get crystal clear for your audience.
Beyond The Numbers
Fobby Naghmi, EVP, National Sales Mgr. of First Option Mortgage
I used to think breathing was about how much I could inhale (cue Bill Clinton 1992 Presidential debate jokes), but I would always fall short of really being able to breathe deeply. Then during one of my yoga classes, the instructor said this “Breathing is about exhaling deeper than you inhale” What?? For so many years how could I have been so wrong? I had misled by everyone to think the opposite about breathing. Then I had one of my “A-Ha” moments: The blueprint that has been designed by the universe is all about giving more than you take. Why would breathing be any different?
Try it…. inhale for four seconds, hold for two seconds and exhale for six seconds. By the third or fourth time you do it, you’ll find that you’ve cleared your lungs of the stale air and made room for brand new fresh air.
To simplify it further, if my garage is at 95% capacity with “stuff”, that means I can’t possibly put any more stuff into my garage until I clean out all the stuff. Add the kicker here, if I find someone to give it to that could use whatever I have to offer, not only is that individual helped out, but I make more space in my garage. Of course, the Red Hot Chili Peppers beat me to this thought since they had already recorded “Give It Away”. At least I can breathe easier now that my garage is finally clean
Mortgage X Marketing Manifesto
7 Must-Haves for a Conversion-Optimized Mortgage Landing Page
1. A strong call-to-action message that's focused on "what's in it for them" with a supporting secondary/description message
2. An arrow pointing or person looking towards the call-to-action and CTA button
3. Lock icon and messaging that addresses security and promises that consumers' data won't be sold
4. A contrasting call-to-action button that jumps off the page and begs to be clicked/tapped
5. An easy start to a multi-step form that's built into the page, with 1 simple question that pulls you into to at least 12 more questions (but no more than 25) and never begins with name, email, phone number right up front; questions should be presented 1 at a time
6. Trust logos and/or positive reviews, ideally verified or legitimized by details like name, location, type of deal, date, and photo
7. An optimized thank you page with video to welcome your new potential client and let them know next steps/set expectations; include a calendar link and value-adds like a downloadable e-book, or a link to download an awesome app like FinLocker as a "thank you"
Thanks, and I'll catch you on next week's The Letter X!
I hope you enjoyed TLX #40! Now go crush this week!
