Small mortgage brokers must determine cost effective methods for finding homeowners prospects who need their loan services. There are several options for acquiring home mortgage leads. Some mortgage brokers look for direct source leads. Other brokers utilize internet leads that were generated from their own web site or radio advertising, and some will seek third party leads that they buy online.
Mortgage brokers and home equity lenders may receive leads directly from Internet companies such as Lending Tree, Smartlending or mortgage companies who bundle and sell leads, such as leadpoint.com. Lending Tree markets their internet leads directly to mortgage institutions that must compete with 4 or 5 other mortgage institutions for the mortgage loans.
SmartLending.com sells their internet leads to mortgage brokers. They advertise that they provide thousands of mortgage professionals with fresh leads each month and their primary goal is to provide cost effective leads that will increase borrower fundings. According to Pat O’Connell, “leads are like gas to a race car driver. In order for me to fund loans and have my company grow, I need a reliable source of mortgage leads.”
Internet mortgage sites offer to sell bundles of mortgages by type to brokers or financial institutions directly. The loans are bundled into groups of 25 by type, purchase leads; refinance leads, debt consolidation leads, second mortgage leads, home equity leads, etc. One site listed 18 different type leads.
Many mortgage lending institutions have set up web site to market leads directly, but this is no easy task. Getting potential borrowers to find your site is very difficult these days because of competitve search engine environment that ranks millions of websites. This is significant as more and more borrowers are turning to the Internet in their search for lenders. In order to get good results from interenet leads, small companies must be committed for a good duration and carefully research all of the options available and choose to work with companies that help meet their needs.