Housing Industry Icon on career-limiting mistakes mortgage professionals make

Expert offers advice on how to avoid them

Housing Industry Icon on career-limiting mistakes mortgage professionals make

Every seasoned mortgage veteran started out as a beginner, making mistakes along the way. Now, MPA Housing Industry Icon Dale Vermillion has shared some of the things he’s learned in his 39-year career – things that mortgage professionals should try to pick up sooner than later.

In an exclusive MPA interview, the Mortgage Champions and Vermillion Consulting founder shared his insights on the top two mistakes mortgage professionals need to avoid and how to deal with them.

“The number one mistake by far that I see in the mortgage arena [is that] loan officers tend to be very transactional, instead of being very relational like they need to be,” he said. “I’ve always been a believer that we should look out for other people [and] that we were put on this planet, not to make ourselves successful, but to make people successful. Zig Ziglar was great at quoting that when he talked about how your success will be really based on how many other people you helped make successful. So that’s our mindset.”

Read more: Housing Industry Icons 2021

The second thing new loan officers commonly do, Vermillion noted, is that they just quote rates. “The interesting thing about the mortgage business is that the rate is not ultimately what dictates how good the loan is for the customer,” he said.

“But if you just quote rate, you’re really just telling that customer what your prices are and when you focus on price only in any sale transaction, you’re gonna lose,” Vermillion added. “You’ve got to focus on your benefits. You have to focus on how you’re helping them change their lives. When you do that and build a relationship, those two things, game-changers, no question about it.”