Win More Referrals from Listing Agents

You’ve felt the market shift. Rates in the 7s, buyers who were ready three months ago now telling you they’d rather wait, and listings that used to move over a weekend sitting for a month. The honest reaction to all of it is to want to put your head in the sand — most of us feel that pull. But the originators still writing business right now aren’t waiting for rates to rescue them. They’ve gotten good at solving the one problem everyone in the transaction is actually feeling: affordability.

In this session, Josh Mettle sat down with two originators from his own production team to walk through exactly how they’re doing it. The idea is simple to say and powerful in practice — stop selling price and start selling payment, the same way the builders down the street already do. When a builder advertises a rate in the 5s, buyers pick up the phone. You can manufacture that same affordability on almost any listing, and when you do, the deal in front of you is only the start. You get pulled into the listing appointment earlier, you become the lender agents actually want at their open houses, and the market everyone’s complaining about becomes the reason those agents start calling you back.

What You’ll Learn

• How to manufacture affordability on any listing. The mechanics of funding a meaningful rate buydown from three sources — the seller, the agent, and the lender — so you can advertise a rate well below market and make the payment, not the price, the headline.
• Why the builders are winning, and how to run their playbook. Builders stopped selling shutters and square footage and started selling rate and payment. You’ll see how to bring that same strategy to resale listings and stale inventory.
• The math that changes the conversation. How the same dollars that shave only ~$200 off a payment as a price cut can save $500+ a month as a permanent buydown — and how to show a seller the payment a real buyer is facing on their home so they understand what they’re up against.
• How to get into the deal earlier. The trigger that gets you looped in at the listing-appointment stage, so you help the agent win the listing and get introduced to the seller before the home is ever live.
• The scripts that make you the preferred lender at every open house. The exact phone and text openers that got agents saying yes, plus how to build a list of active open houses in your market in minutes.
• How to turn curiosity into conversations. The sign writers, QR codes, MLS photos, and flyers that capture buyers walking through — and driving past — a listing, and the follow-up that moves them into a real conversation.
• How to market rate without the compliance headaches. What belongs on every piece you put out, and how seller-paid structuring keeps you clear of the QM and APR issues that scare most originators off this strategy.

Taught By

Josh Mettle

Head of Faculty

The Loan Atlas

Jason Drobeck

Branch Manager

NEO Home Loans

Skyler Ford

Mortgage Advisor

NEO Home Loans