Broker talks about how his team helps customers manage their expectations
Jeff Kerwin, director of Nest Home Loans, said that with house prices going up, eroding affordability, a disparity arises between what first-home buyers’ expectations are and what they can actually afford.
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“Expectation management has become a big part of the role – more so than two years ago,” Kerwin said.
To help clients manage their expectations, Kerwin said his team do a lot of “customer service-type training.”
“One of the one of the tips and tricks that we use to get around that is we obviously work out affordability,” Kerwin said. “People come to us for a mortgage, but the dream really is they want a house. They don't want a mortgage. They want a house, so we really focus on the house.”
Kerwin said they get clients to start sending them properties within their budget, then provide them with feedback around that.
“So, we're kind of training them to search for what they should be searching for in order to manage those expectations,” the top broker said.
Kerwin said they also work closely with a lot of real estate agents to help manage clients’ expectations.
“We buddy them up with a buyer’s agent,” Kerwin said. “We find that the agents are also very, very good at conditioning them to the market. So, these are the expectations and then they are obviously hearing it from their mortgage broker, they're hearing it from their real estate agent, and it really has a lot of success in managing those expectations.”
