Refinance Leads - An Assortment of Mortgage Leads

Many lending professionals think Internet mortgage leads come in one flavor. Others think there are two kinds, Plain and Peanut—emailed and live transfer. The truth is that Internet mortgage leads come in a variety of flavors, like a box of truffles. Which is best depends on the strength of your loan products, the amount of time you have to devote to calling, and your own sales skills.
Basic Leads. The basic Internet mortgage lead has changed little in the twelve years since it was introduced: A consumer logs onto a website and completes a form; the Internet lead provider “scrubs” the lead for accuracy then forwards it to the lending professional via email. Lead quality depends on how the consumer got to the lead form. Did the consumer click on a banner ad or pop-up? Was he or she enticed by the promise of a giveaway? Or did the consumer arrive at the website organically, after using a search engine? The difference between an ad lead and an organic lead is enormous. In the case of an ad, the marketer has taken the initial step, reaching out to the consumer, perhaps luring him or her with a gimmick. With an organic lead, the consumer initiates the contact after a rigorous search. He or she is proactively looking for a solution to a financial challenge and has requested help from a lending professional. An organic lead is a qualified lead.
Enriched Leads. A recent survey by Bankrate.com revealed that fully 37 percent of homeowners cannot name the type of loan they have. This poses a significant challenge to lending professionals using Internet mortgage leads, since the consumer traditionally has been the source of the loan and property information in the lead. To ameliorate this deficiency, California-based iLeads.com has developed a patented process to enrich its organically generated Internet mortgage leads with data from its partner since 2001, First American Financial Corporation, the nation’s largest provider of real estate information with $8.2 billion in annual sales. iLeads.com creates long-form leads populated in real time with data from First American, such as loan type, original lender, appraised value, equity position, property square footage, construction date, APN, and more. Marketed as “Mortgage Plus” leads, these enriched Internet leads allow lending professionals to shorten the discovery process and avoid untenable loans.
Adjustable Rate Mortgage (ARM) Leads. Using similar technology that draws on First American data, iLeads.com can identify the four million Americans facing increases in their adjustable rate mortgages over the next three years. As with the Mortgage Plus leads, iLeads.com is able of offer detailed loan and property information with their ARM leads. iLeads.com can provide these refinance mortgage leads as much as 120 days before the ARM recast date, giving the lending professional plenty of time to initiate contact and pursue a refinance loan. Since these ARM refinance leads are culled from existing records, rather than volunteered by the consumer, iLeads.com screens out consumers on the federal Do-Not-Call registry.
Live Transfers. A “Plain” Internet mortgage lead is sent to the lending professional via email. The “Peanut” version is a lead already on the phone. Live transfer or “hot transfer” leads are called by the Internet lead provider, rather than by the lending professional. The center further qualifies the consumer by making sure he or she still is interested in the loan. If the lead remains qualified, the call center transfers the call to the lending professional. There is a fee for the service, of course, but many lending professionals find that the guaranteed contact with the consumer and the added layer of prequalification justify the higher cost.
Aged Leads. Some Internet leads are sold to just one lending professional. They are “exclusive” in the sense that they are not sold more than once. Of course the consumer can complete more than one lead form, leaving the possibility that a competitor can buy the lead from another Internet mortgage lead supplier. Other leads are sold more than once, at reduced price. As time passes, the value of shared or nonexclusive leads goes down, since the consumer in all likelihood has been contacted by more than one lender. Contact is not necessarily a sale, however, because the consumer does not always sign with initial lenders. A lead several days old still might be viable. These “aged” or “vintage” leads can be purchased at drastically reduced prices, providing an excellent ROI for the lending professional who knows how to turn the situation to his or her advantage. Aged leads also provide a low-cost way for new hires to gain experience talking to consumers seeking loans.
The costs of Internet mortgage leads vary. Since an ARM lead is not initiated by the consumer, it can cost as little as $6 each. A “shared” mortgage lead may cost around $25. An “exclusive” mortgage lead may cost as much as $50, depending on where it is located. Interestingly, iLeads.com charges the same for its “Mortgage Plus” leads as it does for its traditional leads, believing that the quality of the information provides an enormous competitive advantage in today’s mortgage market. A “live transfer” lead can cost from $80 to $160, depending on the location of the lead. The relative value of each lead depends on how the lending professional prefers to work, his or her sales skills, and how competitive his or her products are.

A frequent contributor to online and print publications, Bradley Steffens is the author of twenty nonfiction books for children and young adults and coauthor of seven more. His newest book, Ibn al-Haytham: First Scientist, is the first biography to be published in English about the medieval Arab scholar known in the West as Alhazen.