Brokers discuss refi strategies

Talk turned to refinance strategies during Canadian Mortgage Hangout’s (#cmhTV) second anniversary Thursday and tactics for winning that very valuable segment of business.

Talk turned to refinance strategies during Canadian Mortgage Hangout’s (#cmhTV) second anniversary show Thursday and tactics for winning that very valuable segment of business.

“This year, a focus of mine is to go after (refinance) business; I would say … a quarter of (deals) are either refinance or a switch,” Scott Dawson of Verico Paragon Pacific Mortgages said on Canadian Mortgage Hangout TV (#cmhTV). “It’s picked up for me because I’ve been going after it – if you’re marketing towards that, if that’s your focus and that’s the word you’re getting out it’s going to come to you eventually.”

Dawson has actively mined his existing database to look for possible refinance candidates and to figure out who may be best suited to make the switch. Most times, he has found, those clients currently in a variable rate mortgage make the most sense.

“You go back and look at a file and look at (a client’s) rate. If they’re in a fixed it probably doesn’t make much sense to do much but if it’s a variable you can save them some money because variables have come down,” Dawson said. “This is the year my book has started to churn so it’s really getting on top of renewals that are coming up.”

Dawson has employed a strategy for reaching out to these clients that begins with an email followed by a phone call 120 days before the end of the current term.

The show hosts also discussed the difficulty of switching a client from one lender to another, given the paperwork requirements.

For his part, Jackson Middleton, VP of sales for First Foundation Residential Mortgages believes a decreased commission structure between brokers and lenders – which would result in a lower rate for the client -- could entice clients to fill out the necessary documents to make the switch.

“When the lender is willing to be aggressive and match the rate and all the client has to do is sign their name I feel terrible asking them to provide a whole bunch of documentation to not get them a better deal so even if a lender was to offer half commission to a broker I bet you there is still a market for that because I’d rather take half commission than no commission at all,” Middleton said.

#cmhTV airs Thursdays at 10am PST (1pm EST).