Is now a good time to open a brokerage?

“I think for everyone – myself included – we have to do more right now,” she said. “More conversations; more education/more sharing with prospective clients what’s going on; preparing them for higher interest rates; showing them MBS charts; calculating their payments 1% higher and a 0.5% higher just in case something happens between the time we preapprove them and they go into contract; checking in with them more frequently. More – we have to do more right now. More context, more calls to realtors. Last year, we hardly had to do anything – the loans were falling from the skies. But we need to make very proactive – almost aggressive – contact with our customers.”

The more recent Fuse conference this past weekend was the fifth staged by AIME, and Multari marveled at all that’s transpired since. She attended the first iteration in 2018, and credits the experience as having provided the impetus to start her own brokerage – lighting that fuse, if you will.

“My first AIME conference was the very first one in 2018,” she said. “That’s what literally sealed the deal to leave retail and open my own broker shop. AIME continues to roll out new products. First and foremost, just connecting people – giving us a place to come together and share ideas. Some of what I learned from non-QM is because I heard other brokers talking in the AIME group saying ‘I did this, I did this.’ So that kind of collaboration and sharing across the industry.

“Then the different programs they’ve rolled out – with education and training and the BACPAC,” she added, the latter a reference to the Broker Action Coalition Political Action Committee created earlier this year. I was in Washington, D.C. for the start of the BACPAC and what they’re doing to advocate for consumers. Galvanizing everybody together has been most beneficial.”