A new service will begin next year making it easier for borrowers looking for a home to be connected with mortgage brokers.
Currently, Realty.com.au is a property listing site, but as of 1 February the site will list the option to ‘Find a Broker’ in a directory listing display.
Brokers can also go one step further, as the site will offer a ‘broker per suburb’ option. When the borrower searches for properties in a suburb, that area’s broker will be featured.
Sales director Adam Crocker said the original plan was to wait until late next year for the launch, but with the rise in realty and the growth in the industry, he and CEO Troy Rushton decided to bring the date forward.
Crocker said, “We figured it was a good time to introduce it to market and we did some research just recently over the last few weeks and given the currently lending market as well, we found it was something brokers were very excited about.
“What we’ve found is the consumer is looking for alternatives and they’re looking at their options, almost forced to look at them, and we feel that brokers even now have to look outside the traditional lending big four.
“They have an option to increase their own lending network and be able to satisfy consumer requirement.
“I had a broker tell me recently he had 60 applications last month but only six approvals. I find that absolutely appalling for someone trying to make money in generally a self-funded business.
“What we can do is offer a segway straight to the coal face of the property transaction market. On an even stevens scale, they have equal opportunity.
Crocker said it would also encourage a digital word-of-mouth scenario, where customers can leave reviews and recommend brokers in the listing.
“What we have also done given the recent bad reputation what we’ll start next year is every time somebody gets a lead through our system, they’ll be able to send their customer a review request and that will go into the listing,” he said.
Realty.com.au are currently in talks with aggregators who are interested in using the service.
The service will not take a lead cost from the broker, instead the broker can pay a level of subscription suited to whether they want to be in the directory or featured in the suburb.
