Sometimes the best laid plans of mice and men go astray.

It's the Friday of the third week of the month and here I am, blogging for the first time this week.  It has been quite a hectic week.

Avid followers of my tale will recall that the third week of the month is supposed to be the week where I finish off my appointments and continue any follow-ups from the last 2 weeks.

Well, there have been 3 factors at work for me this week which made this week absolutely flat out.

The first is a great thing, I was referred on to new customers and so have had many more appointments than I had originally anticipated for the month.  That's always a nice thing so I'm not complaining at all.

The second isn't so great.  There is a rush on at the moment.  First home buyers and investors looking to take advantage of low interest rates and the governments generous FHOG package have tripled and quadrupled the volumes of business for many lenders.  I'll take a special mention here of RAMs and St George as the only 100% lenders, as well as CBA and Westpac who've also been very busy. How does this impact me? Well many of my clients have been chasing an answer to their applications as well as Real Estate Agents and Solicitors wanting to know the status of applications as finance due dates approached.  In many cases I've had to extend the finance dates on contracts as there is simply no way that these deals will be assessed in time.  Obviously this makes many people, buyers, vendors and the other professionals who service them - very, very nervous.  Our job is to keep everyone informed and so at the moment I'm doing a lot of informing and co-ordinating.  Important note to all, please make sure that in the current market you set expectations appropriately from the outset.  Advise the client and the Real Estate agent early on that things are VERY slow and then keep them and their solicitor informed along the process.

The third factor for me this week has been that our Aggregator has just changed their software for the payment of commissions.  While this doesn't sound like a big deal, both Amanda and I have had to be trained in the software and then reconcile every single row of data in our loan book.  It's all working fine, but there was a lot of extra homework for both of us that we hadn't anticipated.  But, this job, once done - stays done so we've embraced the change, put our heads down and got on with the job.

It has certainly been a busy time though.  I hope that everyone out there is busy because there is a lot of work out there for brokers in the current market.

I learned a valuable lesson yesterday.

I make a practice of contacting and introducing myself to the other professionals involved in each new home loan purchase.  The real estate agent and the solicitor are my primary contacts.  With every new purchase I make a point of calling each of these parties, introducing myself and advise them of the expected timeframes for finance and the lender details.

I do this simply because it makes everyone's job a lot easier if we are all working together.  It also makes it much easier to extend finance dates or settlement dates if I've already established a rappoire with these professionals.  Remember that Real Estate agents will quite frequently try to push these dates forward as they don't get paid until the deal settles so they want this to happen as quickly as possible.  If you leave it to your client to liaise with all of these parties then there is always the possibility that your clients may be talked into unfavourable terms.

So what happened yesterday?  A Real Estate agent that I dealt with a month ago for one particular client had remarked a few times to me that he was really surprised to have the broker keep him updated along the way.  I was happy with the feedback but thought no more of it, I mean this client was on the Northside and likewise so was the Real Estate agent so I didn't anticipate any further contact after the deal settled.

That Real Estate agent contacted me yesterday and asked if I would mind having a look at his own finance as he'd spoken with his existing lender and they were unable to help him.  He said that he thought of me because I had been so proactive with his previous client. 

The point I'm making is that in the process of helping a client, I have excellent exposure to several possible referral sources.  Without even attempting to do so, I had formed a relationship with these guys which led to a possible business lead.

I honestly hadn't looked at it from that perspective before (ok, maybe I'm not as bright as I thought I was) so suddenly I've seen the golden opportunity presented from each deal.  Possible referral sources and a reason to add these professionals to my database.

And... there is no reason why, once you have established a relationship with these professionals, that you can't ask them to consider you for any future finance needs.

You learn something new every day.