Any advice for a newbie mortgage broker?

stocks27

I'm about to leave my branch manager job in a high street B.S in order to pursue a slef employed career. I'm sick to death of working 10 hour days 6 days a week, always being stressed to the hilt and never seeing my young children. I have decided to join Intrinsic with an exsisting broker firm. Being wet behind the ears I'm really looking for any advice anyone can offer! I felt that being part of a network offered me the support I'm likely to need during my first year but I am reading both good and bad feedback around networks. The charges are a little higher than I would like as they seem to take appox 18% of all sales and the company I will be working under also take an additional 22%...is this normal????

I'm hoping to achieve an income of around 1k per month whilst trying desperately to regain my work life balance...does this sound realistic?

Also not having an exsisting client bank I intend to not only target friends and family for leads but also to buy some...my understanding is that lead bay offer a good service but are there any others?

Again contructive advice would be welcomed!

Thrugelmir

Self employment initially is far more stressful than secure employment. So be prepared to sacrifice a lot to achieve your goals. Unfortunately that'll mean family life may well suffer.

Wish you well.

_Andy_

Are they offering a basic?

stocks27

_Andy_ wrote: »

Are they offering a basic?

No basic, a seat in the office as well as one in a local estate agent a day a week.

I'm keeping my earning expectations reasonably low but just dont know how much business I will have to gross to achieve this figure....as well as payment time scales etc.

As for the stress level being employed against that of self employed......managing 12 women, a mortgage advisor and a financial consultant have taken their toll on me and I cant wait to just worry about my own activties!! lol. :j

_Andy_

I think it's good that you're wanting to get away from the long hours and stress etc.
however (and easy for me to say as I'm not a parent) I think going somewhere with no basic, when you have kids, isn't a good plan. It's going to take 2-3 months before you get a pipeline coming in - can you cope with no income during this time?
Also (and I hope this doesn't come across as patronising) brokering can involve long hours and can often be stressful (e.g. that big case you worked hours and hours on getting through gets pulled/cancelled at the last minute, DOPs being declined etc).
My experience of Leadbay is admittedly 2-3 years ago but from memory the lead quality was appalling.

_Andy_

PS a standard proc fee (stand to be corrected here) would be around 0.35%. Commission from life cover etc will boost your income but be wary of clawback etc.

stocks27

Cheers Andy, I am aware of the potential hazards but if I dont give this a go I would be forever wondering "what if"

I have thankfully budgeted for the 2 months income but not much more to be honest! Do you think £700-£1000 income average per month is realistic or am I aiming too high?

_Andy_

Purely depends on numbers and whether you're doing insurances too. See if you can find out what volumes they're doing and average case size. If they're just doing 70k remos you're going to struggle.
I'd be a bit concerned two month's income might not cut it - can take ages for a good pipeline to build up.
OK bit of number crunching - a 100k loan size gives a proc fee of c£350. If I'm reading it right you'll get (gross) 60% of that, i.e.£210 (assuming it completes - never get carried away with front end sales figures and make sure you dedicate enough time to chasing underwriters/sols etc to get the business through). Sounds like then you'd need at least 5 100k completions a month to hit what you need.. doable depending on your clients, how busy it is etc. Also remember the business is seasonal so don't expect to be writing much new over Xmas etc.
Off to bed now, hope thats of some help. Fair play for getting out of branch management!

chapelman

Hello stocks27

I think you're making a good move. I made the very same decision about 9 years ago and I'm much happier now. It won't of course be a piece of cake, especially in the early years but once you have built up a client base and honed your advising (not selling!) skills you can make a good living offering people good advice and saving them money.

I would say you are right to go with a network, but the amount you will be paying out overall seems a lot. It depends on two things really. First are you CAS, if not then I would be tempted to run with what you've got until you attain it. Second, your target income is way to low for most of the best networks to consider you. Given that your income off an average mortgage should be around 1K if you charge a modest fee and make sure your clients new mortgage is adaequately insured I would say about 25K would be a more reasonable target for year one, without working anything like flat out.
If you are currently just taking a wild guess at probable income, try completing a business planner to see if you can arrive at more accurate prediction. If you haven't got one then PM me and I'll send you one.

Best of luck with your new career :T

castle96

the quality of bought leads is CR*P !