“I’ve been doing this for 15 years now,” Nichole Foster (pictured above) said. “When I started 15 years ago, they chose those shops and did purchases. Those are the doors I would knock on versus the refi shops. And, yeah, I missed the boom of the refi for the most part, but I’m ‘steady Eddie’ with purchases. And my brokers know that they can trust those to close with me because they do take a little more than a refinance to close.”
Her eschewing refi has made the connections she’s forged with brokers that much stronger.
“I think it would be very hard for an AE to get purchase shops now in my market,” she said. “I have competitors who try to come into the offices, and they just can’t make it through because these relationships are so deep. I have built such deep relationships. I’m in these shops every week. I have a milk run where I go and see my purchase shops every single week. We talk about the borrowers, we talk about how our days flow and they trust me that they’re going to close on time because we’ve been working together for so many years.”
Foster noted her focus on boutique mortgage firms rather than the big players, which complements the personal treatment. “You get more of that one-on-one with a loan officer when you’re going into a shop. I’m there probably for two hours – shooting the s**t, in all honesty. Because it’s been 15 years. These people know me like family.”
Whenever possible, she also avoids Zoom meetings. “I really, really think that’s why I’m successful is because I go out in the field and actually create that relationship,” she said. “You see so much more when you’re in a shop than on a Zoom call.”