Like many other people who enter the mortgage origination profession, Luke Chamberlin was looking to get into a business where he had more control over his environment and his own destiny. It was using a lesson in providing client service from his physician father that has helped to build his career in the mortgage industry.
Previously he had been in a job in “corporate America” and had a bad experience.
He started in the mortgage business at the beginning of 2006, just as the housing boom was starting to fade. But in his short time in the business, Chamberlin has become a top originator.
He appears on the Origination News top 150 producers list for 2009, ranking 39th with $77 million in production. This is compared with $28 million in 2008.
For the first seven months of 2010, he had volume of $41 million, so his production is keeping pace with 2009.
He is a senior loan officer in the HoHoKus, N.J., office of NJ Lenders Corp., a Little Falls, N.J.-based mortgage banker.
His business “almost exclusively” comes from referrals. In terms of marketing, Chamberlin uses a combination of e-mail blasts, weekly updates and networking.
It was the networking angle that enabled him to build that referral base. “Our company has a pretty good marketing program, where for every client we have a program set up, some internal people take care of it for us.
“Every client gets a small gift after closing, they get birthday cards, they get a holiday card and they get a quarterly newsletter. So we touch them several times a year.
“Then through my networking, predominantly with Realtors, I get a lot of referrals from them. And then over the years, as I’ve built my base, I am getting a lot of referrals from clients now,” Chamberlin said.
In dealing with Realtors, he says he is very frank in discussing the relationship. He tells them he can be of help to them by getting their deals done, but since it is rare that he knows of a homebuyer or seller who is not already working with a real estate broker or agent, he is not able to give referrals back.
The marketplace Chamberlin works in, Bergen County in northern New Jersey (just west of the George Washington Bridge), is highly competitive, and “everybody knows a half-dozen Realtors or is related to two or three.”
Besides Realtors, he also works with attorneys and accountants.
When he sends out the e-mail blasts, the content includes the current rates.
“I’ve created a color-coded sheet for rates, so [the consumer can see] at a quick glance. The black ones are [rates] that are unchanged, green ones are the ones that improved, red ones are the ones that gotten worse. So at a very quick glance, they can see the table and immediately know” where rates are going, Chamberlin said.
The blast also includes “current insights, usually just a couple of paragraphs about something going on in the business that is of interest to the people getting the e-mail.
“I try to keep it really short so they can literally read it in a few seconds and get something valuable out of it,” he continued. The system he uses tracks which recipients open or don’t open the e-mail and if the recipient did open it, how many times it was open.
The e-mail blast goes out to approximately 750 to 800 people every two weeks. The tracking system shows his e-mails have a 25% open rate, which he says for mass marketing is a pretty high response.
Tracking these e-mails lets him know if what he is doing is working. It also helps him plan future marketing efforts.
His production in 2009 was split 60% purchase and 40% refinance; this year it is so far 70% purchase 30% refinance.
And even though the first-time homebuyer tax credit has expired, he said his purchase business is still going strong.
By loan type, his business is 20% jumbo, 60% conforming and 20% government loans. NJ Lenders has a wide variety of product offerings. “I can help a client who wants to do a $100,000 FHA loan as well as the guy who wants to do a $1.5 million jumbo,” Chamberlin said.
This allows him to serve the widest range of customers possible.
Chamberlin said the hard part is getting the customer. “You hate to get a referral and not be able to help them,” so having a wide product offering is a strong selling point.
While he does not work directly with potential customers to improve their credit scores, the company that NJ Lenders uses for credit reports also makes available credit counseling services.
He refers these clients to the counseling firm, who are experts and make recommendations for them to follow.
When asked what has helped to keep his business on pace this year, Chamberlin said some might consider his answer “corny.” But, “success builds on itself.
“The number of calls coming in kind of surprises even myself. When you are doing a good job for people, people hear about it and they tell a friend.”
It comes down to a higher level of service that he provides to his clients than the competition does, a lesson Chamberlin learned from his late father, who was a pediatrician. In his practice, Dr. Chamberlin would spend on average twice as much time with patients than the other pediatricians in the area. “The patients were upset that they had to wait so long in the waiting room but they were thrilled that they could spend as much time asking questions and getting answers as they needed with the doctor instead of getting rushed out.”
