Mortgage 101 – Making Lending Easy for You

With 20 years in the mortgage industry, Clinton Wilkins and his team are undeniable experts, with quality relationships with lenders. Clinton, alongside his co-host Todd Veinotte, chats through why going through a mortgage broker versus a bank may be beneficial for you!

Todd Veinotte
All right, it’s Mortgage 101. Your guide to home ownership with Clinton Wilkins and myself, Todd Veinotte!

Clinton Wilkins
It’s nice, and, you know, I think it’s sometimes good to start the show, on a chill note. Sometimes we just come into work guns blazing here, you know, like the news cycle has just been so wild. And, you know, I’m so passionate about mortgage lending that we just kind of get right in. But it’s nice to ease into it!

Todd Veinotte
I mean, you’re in the business of of stress. I mean, you really are. You’re dealing with a daily grind, but for the person who’s making that deal, it’s a big deal but they deal with this only maybe a few times in their life. It’s making their dream come true, I mean, this is big stuff for people, right?

Clinton Wilkins
Yeah. And, I mean, I try to take a lot of the emotion out of it. But the challenge is, when you’re buying a home, it’s the biggest purchase of your life, and when you’re getting the mortgage, it’s the biggest debt of your life. So I think that you can be a little bit emotional, and we try to, make that go very smoothly, and we try to take as much of the emotion out of there, because for us, it’s business, it’s black and white, but we also need to remember that there’s 50 shades of gray in terms of real estate and mortgage lending and a lot of different flavors.

Todd Veinotte
So how do you do that? Do you I think it takes some balance?

Clinton Wilkins
Yeah, yeah, it takes some balance. And I think it takes some maturity, and I think it takes a lot of experience. And I mean, I’ve been doing this for 19-20, years, and over 6100, transactions, and $1.7 billion worth of mortgages. I always say that we’ve seen everything, and I’ve said this before on the show, but every day I see something new, and it’s just the ability to work through that new thing. It’s to work through the advice. I had a guy on the phone today that was, you know, he really loved his lender, but he really wanted to seek the advice of an unbiased mortgage professional. He called us, and I said to him, I’m like, “Why do you want to move like, why do you want to change your situation that you’re in now?” He’s like, “Well, I have a standalone mortgage. I have a line of credit. I owe money on this” and I’m like, “but you have so much equity in this property, why are you using an unsecured line of credit at like, 10% why are we not leveraging the equity in your property? You’re up for renewal. You’re a free agent.” You know, I think taking a slightly larger mortgage, but also having that home equity line of credit, it was the right call for this guy, but I don’t know if his lender quite got there with him. And you know, sometimes you’re more attached to the lender that you’re dealing with than you need to be, because, at the end of the day these people in the branches, they have high turn over, and that’s why I have a job. But their number one job is to return the profit to the shareholders, and my number one job is to make sure the customers are getting really the best setup for their needs. And that’s really the difference of what we do every day.

Todd Veinotte
All right, so when it comes to some clients, I mean, you obviously have quite a spectrum here. Give some advice, because you want people to be on the ball and engaged, but you don’t want them to be a pain in the butt either. You don’t want a situation where they’re needlessly sending you emails and leaving voicemails. So it’s kind of that line.

Clinton Wilkins
It is a fine line. I think I do a good job at expectation setting. And it really all comes down to communication. Sometimes things go well, sometimes it doesn’t go as well. That’s just the nature of everything that you do in your life. But really it all comes down to the communication. I think if you can communicate effectively, set what the expectation is, have the asks, have the deadlines, have the follow up. I think it goes very smoothly, and we would do a great job at holding people’s hands. But I think also just bringing it back to the dollars and the cents, I think taking the emotion out of it is key. Hopefully the mortgage lending piece of people’s lives is the easiest piece, you know, buying the house, selling the house, that sometimes can be the harder piece. We want to make sure that that that mortgage lending piece is the easiest for people, at least, that’s my goal.

Todd Veinotte
Okay, so based on all the transactions you mentioned, how many? How many 160?

Clinton Wilkins
100-200 something like that.

Todd Veinotte
Of that, what percent would you say are deals that don’t happen on the closing day for whatever reason like delays. How frequent is that?

Clinton Wilkins
I think they’re less now than they used to be. To be honest, I think 19 years ago, delays were probably quite common, and now I have a very low tolerance for delays, because people’s finances are on the line, and, you know, people need to have a roof over their head. So for me, delays are not cool, and sometimes the delays are outside of our control, and I would say 99% of the time they are, but sometimes we get them for whatever reason. But again, it’s around expectation setting. So for an example, we get instructions sent to a lawyer, oftentimes 30 days before a mortgage is set to fund, whether that’s a purchase or refinance or whatever type of transaction that we’re doing. But then, mysteriously, the documents don’t go to the lender that are required until the day of closing or the day before closing, like, why? You’ve had these documents for 30 days! Get it to your client in four days prior. But I think sometimes it’s that expectation setting that the lawyer has set with the client. Oh, client, you come in when it’s convenient for you. No, you. Client, you come in today. And if we want this to go smoothly, you need to be here, and you need to give me these three things. And I think sometimes it’s just the nature of humans that we let the customer drive the bus. Yes, I’m asking the clients a lot of questions. I’m getting their feedback, I’m getting their input, but I’m giving them one, two or three recommendations, and based on that, we’re running with it, and then I will tell them how to move forward, you know? And that’s why I think customers come to us, and they don’t walk to a bank branch. They want that advice. So once we’ve given them the advice, they make the decision on how they move forward, then we’re going to drive this forward and make sure that it’s going to be as efficient and smooth as possible for borrowers. We’ve all been through transactions in our life, not just mortgage lending and not just real estate, but we’ve all been through transactions that could have gone smoother, and it comes down, I think, a lot to communication. And, you know, we really pride ourselves on, you know, being top notch, especially in that, in that aspect. All

Todd Veinotte
Right, so when it comes to the the lenders themselves, you obviously have close relationships with the lenders, I’m sure. But what’s that like to deal with? Is it becoming less personal, less predictable? What? What could you describe this?

Clinton Wilkins
I think the differences between lenders are more than they ever were, and I think it’s more personal now than ever, especially the more volume that we do, the deeper entrenched relationships we have with some of these lenders. I’ll just use an example for Scotiabank, and I’m just gonna put it out there. We’re a big Scotiabank shop. We do a lot of business with them. They’ve been a great partner of mine over the last almost 20 years, and I have a relationship manager who lives and works in Halifax Regional Municipality, and she approves and declines every single file. So guess what? If I really need her to go to bat for something, I can pick her. I can pick up the phone and say, “Hey, deal with this.” You know, I need you to go to bat for me, because I’ve gone to bat for you forever, for so long. So I think in that sense, the relationships are good. On the flip side, we deal with other lenders that it’s more like a call center type environment, where we don’t have as close a relationship. I’ve been into a lot of their underwriting centers. I know the people but I’m not the norm. Though, you know, the average mortgage originator is probably not going to see these people. I’m in these meetings. I’m going for lunch where, we’re sitting with training, we’re sitting with them and watching them do their job and stuff like that. That’s not the norm. You know, I think dealing with a more of a call center environment is more normal. But you know, the one thing that I will say, it doesn’t matter what lender we use as a mortgage broker, the mortgage broker is local, and the mortgage broker is a small business, and the mortgage broker is providing you with that expert advice, and they’re really unbiased to any lender. They are biased to the consumer. And that’s really the number one thing that you need to really be worried about.

Todd Veinotte
When it comes to brokers themselves, do you think that the broker space is pretty much where it should be, in Halifax and Nova Scotia?

Clinton Wilkins
I think it’s juvenile compared to other markets. When I started, almost 20 years ago, it wasn’t as cool to use a mortgage broker. I think part of the reason, especially, growing up, I grew up in rural Nova Scotia, you were taught not to wrong the bank. And maybe there was only one bank in your town, or maybe only a couple, you know, there weren’t a lot of options. And I think there was a stigma probably coming from the 80s, 70s that people that went to a mortgage broker couldn’t be approved by their bank branch. And it’s really now that conversation is flipped. It’s the consumers that are looking at getting expert advice who are going to a mortgage broker; the consumers that are looking to get a really great rate are going to a mortgage broker. And mortgage brokers have access to lenders and products that your bank branch just doesn’t have access to. So the smart consumers are going there. And I think the conversation has flipped, but it’s taken a long time. And I mean, Todd, we’re having these conversations. Who knew that there were so many nuances?

Todd Veinotte
Yeah, for sure. Anyway, this was kind of an interesting chat. It wasn’t really planned, but I think it was good.

Clinton Wilkins
And I want to just tee up that on our next segment, we’re going to talk about the Bank of Canada. The Bank of Canada met on September 4, and we’re going to talk about what happened with the Bank of Canada. And I’m sure our listeners are going to want to hear!

Todd Veinotte
Mortgage 101. Your guide to home ownership. We’ll be back.