Canam I News

New York, NY/July 20, 2006 - If you're a commercial real estate broker and you want to expand your business to selling commercial mortgages, what should you do? And how do you achieve rapid success? Joe Mardesich, president and CEO of National Apartment Finance Inc., a multi-million-dollar mortgage business, has developed five sure-fire tips for helping real estate brokers achieve super success as mortgage brokers... 1. Choose a niche The most important single step you'll take is choosing a niche within the commercial mortgage arena. You can't be all things to all people. You can't know everything about all types of commercial financing. You can't spread yourself out too thin and expect to be successful. In the mortgage business, specialization is necessary for achieving success.. How do you decide upon a niche? First, consider the type of financing clients that would be most advantageous for your success. Those clients with whom you're already working could be ideal for three reasons: First, because you already know the clients and their properties. Your experience will dramatically shorten your learning curve. Second, your current clients are a prospective market for your financing services. Third, when you advertise or market for more clients, you'll be in a position to help them with a combination of your traditional services as well as with financing. Such specialization offers an opportunity for a big payoff. Consider your "property type" options. For example, you may choose to specialize in SBA loans, A&D (Acquisition and Development) loans, or income property construction loans. It is essential to establish a specialty: a narrow swath of the financing industry in which you are an expert. Anything less in today's commercial financing marketplace is recipe for failure. Another point: It's practical and convenient to specialize "by lender". In other words, you want to work with a small group, no larger than 3 to 6 lenders at most, and make your specialty the same as theirs. Being an expert means not only having an intimate knowledge of your lender's guidelines and needs, but also having just as much knowledge about the market and issues for various types of property 2. Connect with your lenders Once you've chosen your specialty, it's time to connect with lenders. Decide if you are going to do business locally, regionally or nationally. If locally, you can consider local banks and other lenders. They're all in the phone book. If you're going to do business regionally and/or nationally, you will not be able to maintain more than 10 lender relationships, so don't expect to rely solely on local lenders. It is to your advantage to bring more business to fewer lenders than to bring a little business to many lenders. And the more business you do with a lender, the better will be your relationship, the service you receive, and the quality of volume pricing. If you're going to deal regionally or nationally, the internet is a rich source from which you'll be able to locate numerous lenders. Of course, there are a lot of red herrings online as well, so you'll need to exercise judgment. There are directories you can buy, but most are overpriced and not worth much more than phone directories or searching the web on your own. Some of the best sources are the trade publications for mobile home park owners, shopping center owners, apartment owners, and various others. Lenders for those niches, advertise in such publications regularly, and you should call them to position yourself. Your objective is to identify lenders that suit your geographic requirements, and are strong at the niche or specialty you've chosen. Contact them and do some detective work. Find out how they pay and/or protect brokers, how easy they will be to work with, what kinds of fees they charge and when, and get details on their loan program guidelines, rates, and terms. You want to begin a relationship with the best half dozen lenders. It will take time, but it will develop into a relationship of trust and respect as you continue to work together. Don't be impatient: start at the beginning: bring them those first do-able deals. It almost goes without saying that your key lenders may change over time. New players come into the market, others leave, or become uncompetitive for a variety of reasons. Finding and cultivating lender relationships are necessary and integral components of your business program. 3. Know your programs Your next important step is to familiarize yourself thoroughly with your loan programs. Sales people cannot be successful unless they know their products. Similarly, you must know underwriting guidelines, terms, rates, fees, and turnaround times. You have to know what initial paperwork and/or information your lenders require for review, quote, and for deal approvals. You will also have to get to know the steps your client should expect in the loan process. Bear in mind that you're learning a new profession. The more you know, the more effective you'll be. 4. Market to your niche Now that you have "products" to offer, you must market them to your chosen niche. Marketing to existing clientele is easier than marketing to prospects. When marketing to prospects begin by obtaining a list of names. Lists are readily available from numerous sources Whether you want commercial property owners, owners of specific property types, such as mobile home parks or retail income properties, the lists are out there. You can also get lists of professionals who can refer business to you. It's a good idea to have relationships with CPA's and real estate attorneys. Contact them via snail mail, e-mail, or telephone. You must stay in regular touch with those people otherwise they will forget you and recommend business to others, namely your competitors. Our company has a sophisticated database of every contact we have ever made. We nourish those contacts as a farmer nourishes a field of crops. We have streams of personalized messages to follow up on every contact. When one requests a quote or has a loan in process, our messages are tailored to fit the individual's situation. The database marketing system is responsible for the lion's share of our business. As time goes by, the portion it's responsible for continues to grow. 5. Get great support It's imperative that you have an outstanding support staff, especially for the handling of paper work. If you don't, you'll very quickly find yourself bogged down in details that don't make you money. A vital key to the success of our loan officers and Satellite Associates is our processing team. The quality of the team enables the loan officers, once they've initiated a deal, to hand it off and be done with it. Sixty days later, the loan closes, and they get paid. Meanwhile, they've been originating numerous other deals. Spending an inordinate amount of time on paperwork prevents you from meeting with new clients or starting new loans with old clients. It drains away time, your most valuable commodity, from your most profitable activities. An ideal turn-key solution is to work with our company as a co-broker. By doing so, you may immediately benefit from our lender relationships, leverage our database system for your own activities, and utilize our processing team. We have mentored numerous real estate professionals, many of whom have reported that their net fees have dramatically increased since working with us. It is due to the special pricing and yield spread rebates that we receive as well as the extensive volume of our deals with our co-brokers. We also have an Affiliate program whereby you may refer clients, do none of the paperwork, and receive 25% of the loan fee. Finally, there is a Satellite Associate program that lets you work from your own home or office and receive 50% of all fee revenue. For further information, please contact affiliateinfo@nationalapartmentfinance.com. # # # Contact: Jeffrey Sussman 212-421-4475 marketingpro@aol.com www.powerpublicity.com

Source: National Apartment Finance Inc.