How Does a Mortgage Broker Get Paid?

As a mortgage broker, we’re usually asked how we get paid.  It’s a very good question but it’s a question that needs an explanation.

As a mortgage broker, we have access to many lenders including major banks, credit unions, specialty lenders and mortgage-specific lenders.  We’re able to survey the landscape and find the right lender for our customer’s needs.  We also help our customer with the process of getting a mortgage.  We educate and inform our customer of the best options available.  We offer these services to our customer for free. There’s no cost to our customer.

100% Commission

We work on 100% commission and are paid by the lender when a mortgage is completed. A lender’s payment to a mortgage broker could be a flat finder’s fee or a percentage of the mortgage value paid as a commission. The commission may be based on the size of the loan that includes the term of the loan.

We only get paid when a mortgage is completed.  If we work with a customer for months and the mortgage doesn’t get completed, we don’t get paid. While this does happen occasionally we realize everyone is in a different stage of development when it comes to mortgages.  A first-time buyer who’s saving for a down payment and is three years away from buying a home is important to us.  So is the person who’s refinancing a home after the first five years.

Every mortgage broker has a funnel of potential customers.  Some customers are just getting started and are far away from an actual purchase.  Other customers are in the heat of battle and are purchasing soon.  We work with customers at the long end and the short end of the stick.

Customer’s Best Interest

It’s in our customer’s best interest that we service the customer first and do our very best to obtain the right mortgage for each customer based on his or hers’ unique set of circumstances.

Commissions may influence some mortgage brokers.  On the other hand, we use a revenue-neutral mindset where we work with the best lenders for each customer first.  We don’t think about the commission during this process. We maintain our objectivity and do what’s best for the customer.  It’s only after decisions have been made by and for the customer that we even think about commission.

We’ve spent the last 14 years in Winnipeg helping people across Canada with their mortgage financing needs. For the past 8 of these years we’ve worked with one of Canada’s largest financial institutions and we’re consistently one of the top mortgage producers in the nation.

Simply put, we wouldn’t be in business today if we didn’t put customers first.  Our business is built largely by referrals.  We see our customers at the hockey rink and the grocery store.  Our family, friends, associates, and neighbors are often our customers as well.  If we didn’t put them first we would be a leader in the industry for 14 years. No business is successful year in and year out without putting the customer’s needs first.

We accept the risk of working solely on commission and we make it work by putting you – our customer – first.