Oct 30 2007
Business to Business - House$mart
Universal Lending has had a program for 8 years called Housesmart that is in the business of making mortgages and real estate an employee benefit. It is even listed on the State of Colorado employee site as an available benefit so it does have traction. It is very interesting how the program ebbs and flows with time and market conditions. In other words, when real estate is hot or we are in a refinance boom the program creeps near extinction. When things are bad the program generates enormous interest.
It generates interest not necessarily involvement. It amazes me how few loan officers at Universal Lending take part in a program that works and how few Realtors will continue to stay interested in what many real estate trainers are calling the future of selling real estate. The programs most successful Realtor, who has done 16 Housesmart transactions over the last few years, doesn’t even call me and I am now the coordinator of the program. Last year the National Association of Realtors introduced a program called Home From Work that mirrors our program and as far as I can tell has no real presence in Colorado. Why is that?
The reason for this post today is that it is the benefits fair season and we are being invited to several fairs. It could be because we bring an Otis Spunkmeyer cookie machine to the fair but I like to think it is me…..probably the cookies. What blows me away is how many employees say they used the program and attended our classes but have not seen us for awhile. “When are we coming back?” I guess I better come back!
A brief explanation of the program is that we provide the employer a free benefit that offers lunch and learn classes that are based in real estate and lending. We also throw in some fun classes like Feng Shui and office communication. We are a safe haven for employees to get these services and we are held to a higher level by an HR manager. The tangible benefit to the employee is a 20% rebate of commissions by both the Realtor and the loan officer. (I do know rebate is a bad word in real estate although not an illegal word, it is a reduction in commission that benefits the buyer, you are allowed to reduce your commission, ie discount brokers. For further proof check on the Department of Justice website.)
The secret sauce to the program is that even though we have to show the commission reduction on the HUD to be compliant we do not give the credit at closing. If you reduce a clients closing costs at closing it has very little impact and generates no real appreciation. We give the client their money a few days after closing in their place of business with cookies, balloons and the HR manager in tow. All the other employees want to know why “Joe” got all these things, the answer is he used the Housesmart program. Now that is maximum impact!
So why are we not all doing this program? Because it takes work, it is not a quick fix. It is time I go to work.
If you have questions about this program please respond.
This is good information for our Realtor partners and Business owners. I thought the benefits fair we did last week with Lisa Todd was great and well received. We had 16 people sign up for the Feng Shui class coming up.