In a market like ours, the prevailing sentiment among brokers is downbeat as we approach 2024. Although interest rates are finally coming down and there is evidence of competition among lenders keen to fill their new business quotas, the overall feeling is that 2024 will continue to be a struggle as the property market continues to stagnate.
With fewer people actively on the housing ladder, it is increasingly difficult to generate new leads. Latest figures from the HMRC reveal that transaction levels in October 2023 are 21% lower than in October 2022.
However, there is a large opportunity available to intermediaries who look closer to home when searching for a reliable lead generation source rather than chasing the current limited number of external sources.
Are you exploiting the asset sitting under your nose, namely your bank of existing clients? If you aren’t, then 2024 represents your best opportunity to unleash a whole new source of leads.
If you are new to the industry, it is likely that you won’t have built up a significant volume of existing clients. But you are likely to be more conscious of the new requirements of the regulator under Consumer Duty to regularly communicate with clients by providing a visible ‘aftersales’ service, so it will be easier to make sure that proactive culture is embedded in your businesses from the start.
For firms that have lived through the ‘highs’ when the market was booming, finding time to deal with existing clients was not a priority when new business was easy to obtain.
Did you know that for a mortgage brokerage to manually research a client bank of 500, in order to be up to date with potential opportunities, would take on average 42 days? How many brokers have the time to maintain their client banks so that they know at any given moment which clients need a review because an opportunity has arisen to lower their mortgage rate or in the case of BTL landlords that the time is right to remortgage to raise capital in order to add to their portfolios?
To make the most of your client bank and the opportunity that proactively working with this underexploited source of new leads, then let us introduce you to Property Circle’s LeadGen. This revolutionary technology, when linked to your client base, automatically evaluates your existing clients 24/7 to identify mortgage opportunities. The algorithm then validates them with the same level of detail that you’d expect from an experienced broker who doesn’t know the client. Then we prioritise them for you. Only then do you need to take action and do what you do best – support your clients.
Not only does LeadGen free up time to leave you free to concentrate on new business but adopting our solution means that you are keeping in closer contact with existing clients and meeting your Consumer Duty requirements by demonstrating you are maintaining an overview on customer outcomes in the longer term.
Make 2024 a year of opportunity by turning your passive client bank into an active part of your client retention and new lead generation strategy with LeadGen from Property Circle.
Marc Randall is CEO of Property Circle
