Welcome to the July episode of Learn With A Lender with Joel Schaub of Guaranteed Rate!
In this episode Joel the importance of being a mentor to your clients. Joel emphasizes his long educational sessions he does with his clients as an important part of his business. Joel explains “adverse market fees” and how this fee has impacted the refinancing market. Joel gives a tip on how you can reconnect and provide value to your old clients. Last, Joel talks about the partnerships he’s looking to build with other agents.
If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!
Joel can be reached at joel@rate.com and 773.654.2049.
Transcript
D.J. Paris 0:00
This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by Joel Schaub at guaranteed rate. As a realtor it’s important to partner with only the most trusted name in mortgage lending. Joel has 1000s of satisfied clients and gives $1,500 of his commission back to your buyers on every closing. He is known for his ability to close even complex deals start to finish in only 14 days to learn what 1000s of others already know. Make a note to call Joel at 773-654-2049 or email joel@rate.com Guaranteed Rate is an equal housing lender licensed in all 50 States Consumer Access Number 2611 And now on with the show.
Hey, welcome to another episode of Keeping it real in the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Parris, I’m your guide and host through the show as always, and today, once again is our monthly series are one of our oldest monthly series and our most popular monthly series called Learn with a lender with Joel Schaub from guaranteed rate. Now, Joel is vice president of lending at guaranteed rate, he’s got to that level for basically what he does for clients, which is he specifically gives back part of his commission every time back to the buyer. Now, last year alone, Joel gave back almost $300,000 in closing costs to buyers who worked with him, which puts Joe’s volume in the top 1/10 of 1% of all lenders nationwide. Now out of 400,000 loan officers in the country, Joel is currently ranked number 137. And last year, he closed 535 transactions, his highest amount ever. And then and that was for almost 200 million this year already or only towards getting towards the end of July here. But already he has closed 383 transactions for 155 million. This is you know when we bring on partners on the show, we want people who are true experts in their field. Of course Joel is now if you are looking for a loan officer, we cannot more highly recommend Julie’s the very best we’ve ever worked with Joel can be reached at Joel. So here’s his email joel@rate.com. Again, Joel jvl@rate.com. Or you can shoot him a text message or call him at 773-654-2049. Let’s say hello to the biggest Cubs fan. I know Joel, welcome once again. Hey, thanks
Joel Schaub 2:39
so much for having me on DJ, really great to be here and all those accolades. That kind of even impressed me when I hear them. But I’ve told you this before none of them numbers matter. It’s all about giving back. And actually having the agents get something from every time they tune into keeping it real. So congratulations on your success and doing this for so long. It’s it’s impressive,
D.J. Paris 3:02
thank you, it’s fun, because we it’s funny, like in the last couple of months. And just to pull back the curtain slightly. On our show, we we I talked to Zonta, who’s our producer, if you ever reach out to our show, she’s usually the person that that contacts people back, whether it’s a guest or and all of a sudden I said design and we need to get more more more sponsors. And so we kind of started to come up with a plan. And just so happened that as we were trying to formulate our plan to get more sponsors, not not people like yourself to bring on the show, we you know, we would never want to change that. But just people, you know, advertisers and things. And all of a sudden, we have now started getting a flood of advertisers, basically tech companies, mostly who want to advertise on our show. Now for our episodes, of course, we only talk about guaranteed, right? But what’s very exciting is to your point is it took about five years of constantly really pumping out the content. And now all of a sudden, of course, we have a much larger listener base, mostly due to our guests providing such incredible content, Joel, of course, like you do every single month. And so Joel is a living example of just discipline, hard work and consistency. This podcast is is really nothing other than me doing this every single week for many years. It does, it does work. This is a relationship business. And people are gonna get hooked on, in our case, our content from our podcasts and Joel’s case how his partnerships that he builds with real estate agents. In fact, we were talking offline just before we started and Joel said, you know, I really used to focus almost exclusively on refi. As he goes, I now focus most of my time on building partnerships with other realtors, which has obviously been very successful for you,
Joel Schaub 4:43
DJ last week and agent asked me something very similar to what you were just talking about here, which is how do you get to a point where you’re doing 50 transactions each and every single month, right? And it’s just consistency. So I speak
D.J. Paris 4:59
you know, And Joel is on his way back. So we lost you, but you’re back. So
Joel Schaub 5:05
I’m mortified when it connects like that. Now, but I know that you handled it while I stepped away.
D.J. Paris 5:11
We’re gonna fix it in post. So not a big deal. I kept the live viewers entertained. While we were waiting, so no big deal it happens.
Joel Schaub 5:20
Okay, well, I’m going to tune in to see if you juggled or what you did while I was gone.
D.J. Paris 5:25
I did juggle.
Joel Schaub 5:27
But the question here, I literally had an agent DJ that asked me last week about when you were talking about the numbers, right? How do you close 50 transactions a month? And I mean, if somebody else doing the work? And the answer is no, I actually speak to every single borrower, and I help them. And when, when I went through that with them, no matter what you’re doing, you’re always busy, right. But it’s important to find somebody that’s one step above you, and then mentor them. So if it’s somebody in your office, if you’re right now doing two or three transactions a month, and you want to build it up to five or 10, find somebody that you can mentor, or that can mentor you so that you can take it to the next level. And then what I also said was just like, anything, when it comes to like a podcast, or being a realtor, the barrier of entry is low. And the reason you’re successful, and the reason that we’ve become successful is just one thing. It’s consistency. It doesn’t happen overnight. You’ve built this by doing it every single time the same way.
D.J. Paris 6:32
You’re exactly right. And I suspect if I were to ask you, do you consider yourself to be you know, the very smartest or the the best loan officer on the planet? Or people might ask me, Wow, you’re really good at podcasting. I’m like, I don’t know that I’m so good at it. I just know that I do it a lot. And I get guests who who probably provide much better content than I could. But I don’t think of it is it’s not just because I’m naturally skilled at communicating. In fact, as a podcast host, I’d be better at listening than I would should be talking but but the reality of it is, is I just do, nobody else is doing it this much. And and again, yes, there’s a little bit of skill involved. And you of course, have tremendous skill. I don’t want to take away from that. But your consistency is really the key to your success, I think if I don’t want to speak for you, but I know that that’s a big factor.
Joel Schaub 7:25
It’s experience, it’s just doing it repetitively. So it’s literally no you’re not insulting me at all, my skills are only okay, what made me to the level where I could do it was putting in the time and creating a plan. And the plan was to go after purchase business and be different. And it was about creating a brand. So that people recognized the brand, because there’s a lot of lenders and just like all the realtors out there, there’s a lot of competition. So differentiating yourself staying consistent, and doing the one or two things that actually provide value back to the clients versus trying to be everything to everybody. So the big core thing that I do is long education sessions right up front with clients. And even if you’re not great, you can be an educator. And that takes you so much further than any sales course, any tips and tricks on how to get people to do things doesn’t work that way, if you can provide value and learn what you’re good at and what you can teach, that’s how people are going to listen to you as the expert. And so the same way. So keeping it very consistent and doing it repetitively is going to be better than any kind of like sales course that you could ever take to try to get people to do what you want them to do. And that’s not the way we operate. And you know that
D.J. Paris 8:49
I do and and I’ve had firsthand experience working with you and your team. And it is truly remarkable just how well oiled and professional. You guys are specifically around education. And I think that’s, you know, your major differentiator. Of course, lots of loan officers are out there 400,000 in the country. And I wonder what percentage of them? The the client would say, boy, they really, really not? Did they give me a great rate, because lots of loan officers can do that. But did they educate? Do I know what’s going on? Do I feel confident in this closing? Do I feel like I’m not in the dark? But I wanted to talk about which of course, you know, you guys do a great job of but I did want to talk about what’s some pretty exciting news on the refi side, which has to do with a fee that was introduced during the pandemic to help offset you know, some of the costs that the banks were incorporating, and that fee is now going away. So could you mind sharing just a little bit about what that means? Um, how to and how to talk about it if you’re a realtor.
Joel Schaub 9:52
Yeah, this week alone rates are drastically lower than they’ve been in months and months, especially on the refinance. transactions. Last year, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac enacted a adverse market fee. Okay, effectively overnight, it meant that a $400,000 loan was 50 basis points more expensive to originate and all the banks pass that along. Thank you banks, pass it right along to the customer. So what does that mean rates didn’t go up a half a percent, the cost to get a specific rate went up a half a percent and points. So a $400,000 loan costs $2,000 more the next day. And all banks did was baked that into the rate. So effectively, rates went up on refinances last year, right. A week ago, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac overnight without warning said that fee is now gone. And most banks now originating loans going forward, saw rates dropped by an eighth or a quarter point overnight. Okay. So how is this an opportunity? We’re realtors, right? If I’m a realtor listening, I’m not necessarily so concerned with what a client has once they own a house, but you should be. It’s a real opportunity DJ. And if I was an agent right now, and I had an extra hour or two, I would create a list of all my clients that had closed and simply call them and say, now that we’re closed, it does make sense for you at least to call back the bank that did the mortgage and see if you can refinance to a lower rate for free. Okay,
D.J. Paris 11:33
yeah. And you’re, you know, you’re saving, like you said on a $400,000 loan, that’s, that’s, you’re saving two grand and closing in those refi fees. That is a substantial amount to refi. And also, by the way, oh, you’re Yeah, you’re getting a better rate, possibly.
Joel Schaub 11:51
Because last year, do J, you’re exactly right, people bought before. And rates were really low last year, but a lot of borrowers found when they called their bank, that they weren’t eligible for the rate that everybody else was getting, right because of that adverse market fee. So it meant that borrowers that were buying homes last year, were seeing rates under 3%. But consistently, the refinance rate was above that. And it costs a lot of money. So a lot of people sat on the sidelines. Now’s the time, we don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. And right now, for the next couple of weeks, we anticipate these rates being below 3%, on average, across the board, even for refinances. So if I’m an agent, I’m making some phone calls, and it’s going to do one of two things. One, it’s going to keep you in touch with your past clients, which is a big plus. Okay. Your tell them, the big secret is calling their bank and not asking what the lowest rate is, okay, calling them back and asking what the lowest rate is, but then asking, what rate can I get? If I pay no closing costs? What’s the true no closing cost rate? And that’s where the banks will say, okay, I can get you down 150 or $200 a month without paying any fees. And that’s the real secret, there’s always a rate that’s probably lower than what you have now, where you don’t have to pay anything at all. No appraisal, no title fees, no processing fees. And if that saves you over $100 a month, it’s worth the paperwork to sign and get a lower rate. It wasn’t available before. Now it is. Yeah, it’s
D.J. Paris 13:27
pretty remarkable. And the amount of work that it takes for a current, you know, loan holder to refi, as is not not a term, if, unless there has been what major life event changes, it’s usually a pretty simple process.
Joel Schaub 13:43
Banks make it hard. But that’s why show back to the person that helped you. If you don’t have the right person, you can definitely reach out to us. But refinancing DJ is really simple. As long as you’ve continued the job, and you’ve made the payments on time, it is a few pieces of paper that do need to be signed, updated income and asset statements. And a lot of times they don’t even need the appraisal NOW. So there’s a lot less that goes into it. Okay. The second thing, remember, I told you there were two things right. A second thing would be hopefully that just by reaching out, they say, you know, thank you so much for the information. My brother, you know, Jim and Susie are getting ready to buy a home, I’d like to introduce you. So it’s that consistent touch. If I’m an agent, and I have time on my hands, and I know a lot of us don’t. But call blocking setting time just to call back your past clients and it sounds like this. Hey, Kevin, you know, it’s Joel, I know that we closed a year ago. How are you? Good. I’m sure you’ve probably seen it in the news, but rates are down right now on mortgages. So I think it might be a good time for you to reach back out to the mortgage guy who helped us close this deal. And see if you could save some money. I don’t know if it’s right for you or not. But I wanted to pass that along to. It’s as simple as that you’re connecting and you’re adding value And that helps right DJ.
D.J. Paris 15:02
It’s, it’s really just that simple. It does help. And I’m just going to make up a number here, but I would guess 99% of Realtors do not do that. Maybe, let’s we can be generous and say 95%. Maybe, of Realtors don’t. But it’s probably almost 100% Don’t. So this is a really an amazing tip. Because we all know that, you know, we think, okay, that transaction is closed, it’s been three years, I don’t really want to call them and say, Hey, are you thinking about buying or selling right now, which of course you can do, but a lot of agents are not comfortable with that call because it feels salesy. It feels not as authentic. But like Joel said, at the very beginning of the call, if you have some knowledge or some education to provide to them, you never have to ask for the business. Although you can always ask if you want, but education cuts through all of that discomfort, because you’re just literally saying, Hey, I just thought about you, here’s a possible opportunity. And Joel made it set it really well saying I don’t know if this is right for you or not, but it’s worth a phone call. And again, the only thing, there’s no negative that can happen. There’s only positive even if the homeowner just goes now we’re good at the moment, they’re gonna go well, that was nice of our of our agents to think about us after the sale,
Joel Schaub 16:15
a few minutes of time DJ on a phone call, where you’re not getting anything from it, and you’re not expecting anything from it. So you’re not calling saying, if you know anybody wants to buy or sell call me right, that line is all played out, what you really want to do is actually be in their best interest, care about them a few minutes to say I think it makes sense for you to call the mortgage bank back could really be a benefit, because you never know who they know. And the more you can stay in touch with them with these little nuggets of value, they’re going to remember that and when they move, they’ll remember you. Or if their brother or sister or family member is looking to buy or sell, they’re going to refer you. Because you called without any dollar amount in mind, you’re not trying to make money. But you got to set a time, you got to set the time aside, okay, and it has to be you it can’t be your assistant. These don’t have to be long calls. And it’s even good. If you even got a voicemail just leave the message saying there’s no need to call me back, I was just thinking of you, I’m sure you heard the news about rates being down, now’s a good time to see if you could save some money, call me if it ends up happening.
D.J. Paris 17:26
That kind of thing. It’s it’s such a simple and it’s it’s really oftentimes, you know, the best ideas are the most simple. That’s what outcomes razor, I think is what that’s called. But but the idea is that you know the consistency, so you can’t, you can do it once and you’ll you might get some benefit. Maybe somebody will call you back and you know, say oh, by the way, I have another friend who needs your help. But But consistency. So do you have to do it every month, oh, maybe not a phone call every month, I don’t know, maybe you could but think you know, you have to create a structure and say every however many months, every three months, I’m going to be calling them with some idea or some education or whatever timeline you think is appropriate. But you have to track it. You have to you have to have it scheduled. And you just have to do it. And you’ll find it’ll take time. It might be two years of doing this. And then all of a sudden, boy, the you know, the referrals and other opportunities will just keep rolling and just like it did for you and your business drawl. It’s worked out like that here at our podcast as well. So consistency education, really are the two keys consistency and education.
Joel Schaub 18:34
We in our group right now we’re already planning the 2022 closings, right? So there’s two types of business, right? It’s what we’re going to do right now to get new transactions in the door. And it’s also what we’re doing today that we know will result in closed transactions, six to 12 months from now. And that is what we just talked about. These type of phone calls right now aren’t going to result in deals today for you. These are the planning so that you are busy in the times where it’s not so busy. Okay, taking the time so that you can block and make calls to people that already know like and trust you. Okay, if you close the deal, they know you. Hopefully they still like you. And if you did a good job, they trust you. Okay. And that’s how right now we’re doing 20 to $30 million of closings every single month consistently at that level, because of what we did six months ago, and the month before that is planning for the future. And a lot of people just focus on what they’re doing today. So I challenge everybody to call block, put some time aside, and you don’t have to change things overnight. Everybody always underestimates what they can do in a year. And they overestimate what they can do in a week. I’m gonna call everyone I know in a week. No, you’re not you’re not gonna you haven’t done it before. You’re not going to do it now. Set small blocks aside and make a few phone calls and get comfortable. And you’ll see you’re really Providing value and now you’re providing something that’s relevant, timely, and in the news rates are down. Did you know this is how it could benefit you. And I guarantee this will result in new deals for you if you’re an agent.
D.J. Paris 20:14
And I recommend everyone who is listening, who is, of course, a realtor to pay attention to rate to lending news, you know, you can subscribe to all. So there’s lots of websites that will kind of give you a daily briefing, and here’s what’s going on. And most of the time, it probably won’t apply to a realtors direct business. But the reason I knew about this, this, you know, refi rate removed, being removed, officially next month across all institutions that Joel’s company’s already removed it is because I pay attention to the news and I don’t have the time I look at it, I don’t know what I’m looking at. But this one caught my eye. And so as a realtor, you might, you don’t always have to wait for our episode to give you these kind of tidbits you can do what what I did was just, you know, do a little Googling and set up some alerts around mortgage news so that you get notified because your clients probably aren’t buyers and sellers, your homeowners are not probably paying attention to lending rates, once they move in there. They’re sort of done, they’re moving on with their lives, they’re not thinking about it. But you can think about it as a realtor and stay in touch and give them it gives you a reason to reach out.
Joel Schaub 21:18
There’s one site on the internet that’s an unbiased behind the scenes for mortgage that a lot of realtors, check out, okay. And it’s called mortgage News Daily. Okay, so it’s just as simple as mortgage news daily.com. And it’s free, you’ll be able to look and see what people in the industry know. It has very good news feed so that you can pick up on things that you can when you’re driving people around, it’s important to have stories, people connect with stories, and what’s better than true life current things that are happening. So I encourage everybody, it’s a free plug. They don’t pay me. But I’ve been subscribing to them and checking them out daily, I get an email from them mortgage News Daily. It’s the behind the scenes that gets quoted on CNBC and CNN etc.
D.J. Paris 22:08
So it’s not the prettiest looking website, but it is probably the best aggregator of mortgage Articles More it that’s what I use, do I use mortgage News Daily, I look at it for about five seconds a day I scan to see if there’s a headline that I understand because a lot of it’s really industry specific, but I but that’s how I knew about the rate being removed by the Fed. So very exciting stuff. So realtors, you know, just it just doesn’t mean you have to study things for hour a day, just spend half a minute, knowing what’s going on in the world of lending. Of course, in the world of real estate, I started making these these one minute videos, which I just started doing for about what’s going on in the Chicago market. Because I know that even our own Realtors probably aren’t looking at this, this the you know the the market stats. So I started creating 62nd videos because our agent said, Hey, could you give us a little bite sized tips. And so we’ve only done about three of them so far. But you know if I can do them for a year, my my want to get my our agents hooked on this content. So get yourself hooked on someone’s content, whether it’s this podcast or others. Joel, of course, is a great resource to all realtors who want to partner up and actually help build their businesses together. Can you talk just a little bit about sort of the partnerships that you were looking for with other agents?
Joel Schaub 23:30
Well, a lot of people have literally heard me on over the last several years, and they actually have tested me they’ve reached out on a Saturday and I’ve answered and I’ve replied to emails just helping them with nothing in return, where they say, Hey, I got a situation with this current lender, what should I do, and I help them through that. But we’re licensed in all 50 states, I focus primarily on just north of a dozen states so that I can keep the licensing and be up to date on taxes and transfer fees, etc. So I can speak intelligently. But if it’s in a state that I personally don’t handle, I have a staff of people that handle all 50 states. And right now the partnerships quite literally, if you don’t have a mortgage partner, you just have somebody that you’re giving deals to, they should be helping you. Okay, they should either be helping you on CO marketing, spending money on your lead sources, helping you on your open houses, it’s got to be a real partnership. And I know a lot of lenders out there saying Don’t say this, but they should be spending money on you. Okay, RESPA compliant ways where they can contribute money to either your marketing campaigns or your open houses. And that’s what a real partnership is based on. So I never go to agents and ask them, send me your deals. I like to learn what they’re doing to get business and figure out true bonafide ways that I can add value, whether it’s writing a check, or helping them on open houses or creating marketing events. There’s a lot of ways that a real estate, mortgage professional teamwork go together. So if you don’t have somebody like that, and you’re working with somebody right now, ask them what they’ll contribute. Because right now the lenders are busy. And they should have money. I know a lot of people on my team personally reach out to agents and help them on a lot of the different campaigns that they’re working on. And they should be willing to, and if they’re not move on, find a lender that will help you. Okay, it’s got to be a two way street.
D.J. Paris 25:29
If you’d like to work with Joel or reach out to him for any reason, and you should definitely email him at joel@rate.com, or send him a text or call him directly on his phone, which is 773-654-2049. And as Joel said, guaranteed rate is licensed in all 50 states. Joel himself works with about a dozen states, but he can pass you over to someone else in the event that you need more expertise in a state where he is not primarily focused, but they can guaranteed rates awesome, they did my most recent purchase, and I couldn’t, couldn’t more highly recommend them. Well, Joel, what a great episode once again, and as before we leave, we want to just remind everyone the best way you can help support our shows to tell a friend, think of one other real estate professional that could benefit from hearing this great conversation with Joel and send them a link to the show best way to do that just seminar website, which is keeping it real pod.com. Back, if you scroll down on the homepage, you can see all of the different episode categories we have, including learning with a lender with Joel shop, and you can actually see all of adult shop episodes right there in case you wanted to go through and binge listen to all of them, which you may and you probably should do, because every single month, we don’t really talk about rates much at all, we really just talk about ideas that Realtors should be implementing to grow their business. That is the purpose of the Learn with a lender series, even though of course, Joel is not an agent, but he works exclusively with agents. And so he is always to so much great content in there. So go back and listen to those old episodes. And you don’t have to pay much attention to an episode two years ago that where we talked about the rates, because that may not be applicable now. But if you just wait a little bit in the episode, you’ll hear a great tip. So go back, tell your friends about the show, keeping it real pod.com Or just have them pull up a podcast app and search for keeping it real and hit the subscribe button once it comes up. And of course reach out to Joel You know, definitely he and his team are exceptional. They’re great. And I say this a lot but we get pitched a lot on this show to bring other lenders Of course, lots of lenders would love to get in front of our audience. We of course turned them all down because Joel is is the best we’ve ever worked with. So check him out joel@rate.com or call him at his number that we provided. Joel, thanks once again for being on the show. And we will see you next time.
Joel Schaub 27:53
This was really good. I know we added a lot of value was great. And I’ll see you again soon DJ thanks for all
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