How selling benefits instead of rate helps you build customers for life
Interest rate headlines make up much of the news cycle in the mortgage industry, especially as another Federal Reserve rate decision approaches.
While everyone is keeping an eye on rates and what that might mean to prospective homebuyers, one broker discusses the advantage of selling more than a percentage when working with customers.
Hunter Bolling (pictured top), loan officer with Edge Home Finance, said one major edge that brokers have in local communities is getting to know customers, and really honing in on what is important to them.
“The biggest thing is education from the beginning and being prepared, and even through the slower markets or the heavy seller market, buyers are moving quickly,” Bolling told Mortgage Professional America. “One of the things that we do is we prep them. Whenever we do pre-approval, on 82% of our pre-approvals, we follow up with a Zoom call. We're going through the application. We're going through the numbers. They are prepared.”
Bolling said going through with the video call after the pre-approval lets him know exactly what the potential buyer is looking for in the deal. He said this is especially important because they work with many veterans on VA loans.
“We do a lot of VA, and so for veterans, a lot of them right now are looking to keep cash in their pocket,” Bolling said. “So if you want to keep cash in your pocket, this is what it looks like. If you want to spend money out of pocket, this is what it looks like. So when they see two different homes, they're okay with spending money, because they're going to want to be in this market.”
Building trust
By working with the potential buyer on their goals before they ever look at a house, Bolling said it builds a level of trust that largely keeps them from being shopped around for rates.
“The real thing is that it builds trust,” he said. “Very rarely do we get shopped. That’s another aspect that loan officers are dealing with. They’re like, ‘I’m getting shopped. I'm having to cut comp.’ If you build that trust with them, you educate them and you listen to them. What are their cash-to-close goals? What are their monthly payment goals? How do you make this possible?
“That is the tunnel vision that we create for the buyers. If we're giving them all their solutions in one spot, why would they need to go elsewhere? We’re solving two solutions in one: the solution for a client leaving us, and also the solution for building trust and for them to know what their finances are.”
Bolling said their eventual goal is to do all VA loans. With that as an eventual goal, he believes it makes the relationship-building portion of his job even more important. It helps those who have served their country use the benefits they’ve earned.
“Everyone else is going to do it differently, but we spend so much time with people, and our business has flourished because of it,” Bolling said. “Our goal is to be 100% VA at some point. If we're going to do that, then we have to invest time, energy, and education in people. We were at 36% VA loans last year, and this year we’re at 70%. We've seen double the amount of VA business.
Educating veterans
One of the best parts about taking on more VA loans is getting veterans away from less reputable lenders in the space who don’t have the veterans’ best interest in mind, according to Bolling.
“It has been very transformative, and it's an easier way for us to get them away from the bad lenders,” he said. “I don't have to name names. You can't tell me that credit union got on the Zoom call with you and went on verification with numbers, and then this weekend, ran numbers based on the house. You just can't tell me they do it, because they won't.
“They're not answering the phone on Sunday night, and so this just shows the importance of having that local relationship and letting it flourish.”
A Vetted VA report found homeowners who used VA or non-FHA government loans had 18 times higher average net worth than renters. Only one-third of 18 million US Veterans have utilized their VA loan benefit. https://t.co/4QIHolkCbP
— Mortgage Professional America Magazine (@MPAMagazineUS) June 6, 2025
Part of building that relationship is clearing up misconceptions about the VA loan program to make sure a veteran has all the accurate information they need to make the right homebuying decision. Also, it makes sure they’re actually using the benefits they’ve earned, rather than letting them go to waste.
“One of those aspects, too, is where veterans aren't educated well about VA loans,” Bolling said. “My wife was not well-educated. She was in the Navy for eight years, and she went to buy her home. And I said, ‘You don't know any of this?’ And she said no. She missed out on eight years of her life investing. How do we take her issue and change that for others? That is the heart and passion behind it.”
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