Mortgage market volatility – how can you ride the storm?

The back-to-basics strategy has paid off: “We’re up 12% year-over-year – pretty much an anomaly in the industry right now,” Lynn said. “Smart growth, steady growth, knowing what your target customer is, sticking with it and grinding it out every day is the best advice I could give to anybody starting out.”

And contrary to popular belief, Lynn insists this is a moment to launch a brokerage: “It’s really a good time to start out,” he said. “It’s going to be tough the first year anyway, so you might as well take your medicine together. It’s tough for everybody.”

Another aspect differentiating Future Home Loans from its competitors is its high Google rating – five stars based on 700-plus reviews – that doesn’t happen accidentally. “It’s a top-down approach for me,” Lynn said. “I have to bang the table about it every day. That’s the easiest way to differentiate yourself in the market – to provide excellent customer service. It’s also the hardest. But we bang the table every day about five-star reviews. The LOs know this. We always want to own it, and we’ve got ways built in throughout the process.”

Lynn encourages employees to solicit reviews after working with customers, with the hint of professional rewards to come: “To me, it’s the cheapest form of quality control,” he said. “I’m not going to monitor everybody’s phone calls – I don’t have time to do all that stuff; it’s a small company. But you get a five-star review from a customer, I feel you’ve done a good job. And that’s how I do my quality control, letting them know this is how I’m rating you against your peers for promotions and everything down the line internally.”