Covid 19 and the lack of housing inventory are not stopping many seeking to purchase a home. Often the reason cited is “it’s less expensive to own a home than to rent!” Loan originators and real estate agents who can corral these potential clients with a system that can keep track of referrals and client progress can realize consistent, ongoing business for the future!

My strategy to assist ALL clients who want to purchase a home started with a very sharp but new real estate agent, Derek Simonsen, with Remax Champions . I asked Derek to give me all of his past and currently turned down client referrals, and he did!

The first step was to set up a custom tracking template in my Calyx loan operating system under Prospects. This template generates a report that can be shared to keep track of the progress of clients.

I then signed up with Send Out Cards and picked the realtor campaign to keep in touch and encourage referred clients. Reminding myself when to “send out a card” was as simple as noting a date in the Contact Info tab of Calyx.

There are three areas that most often hamper a client from purchasing a home now:

Solita’s House is the HUD housing counseling agency(HCA) that I am working with now, but there are thousands of HCA’s across the United States that can be found at https://apps.hud.gov/offices/hsg/sfh/hcc/hcs.cfm . I am working with Solita’s House for a variety of reasons:

However, I am finding that many HCA’s are at full or near full capacity. Covid 19 has resulted in an avalanche of people trying to stay in homes they own or rent. Most housing counseling agencies are the first contact for affected consumers.

So I called my HUD Housing Counseling Federal Advisory Committee colleague Ellie Pepper with the National Housing Resource Center and asked where to find more availability of housing counselors for pre-purchase clients. She directed me to a powerhouse of a resource, and we are working together now for immediate help. Further, we are collaborating to make the bridge from HUD housing counselors to loan originators and real estate agents a working reality now.

If you need help starting your system or finding a HUD Housing Counselor contact us or call Pam Marron at 727-534-3445.