The time has finally come: borrowers are “on rate watch.” As mortgage rates continue their relatively steady march downward, we’ve crossed into the territory where current borrowers could see savings with a refinance.

With that news, lending institutions everywhere breathe sighs of relief. The well of refinancing activity had all but run dry, but it’s trickling back to life again. 

You want to soak up as much of that business — and the revenue that comes with it — as possible. That means now’s the time to be watching borrowers, tracking their intent and jumping in when they’re ready to act. A refinance monitoring software like Dream Rate can automate a lot of the work here for you. 

Would your team benefit from deploying this kind of tool right now? We can help you figure out the answer by exploring both the opportunity in front of us and the way the right software can help. 

Strike while the iron’s hot

A recent New York Times article asserts that more than 1.7 million borrowers could financially benefit from a refinance. 

Those folks have rates of 6.92% or higher, paired with strong financial profiles (e.g., at least 20% equity in their home, credit scores of 720 or higher). On average, per the Times, those people could save about $334 a month with a refinance. 

That means that a good portion of the contacts in your CRM could be tapped again. 

That repeat business maximizes ROI for your business. When you serve a customer twice, the foundation you laid with their initial mortgage gives you a platform from which to spring. Your team is already set up for success. 

Better still, the right refinance monitoring software helps you generate repeat business — and prevent those borrowers from going elsewhere for their refinance. You can strategically deploy technology to help you capture more refi business without overextending your team. 

Give your team a tech advantage

Since now’s the time to be watching your database, your team needs to figure out how it’s going to leverage this opportunity. With a refinance monitoring software like Dream Rate, you can simplify and streamline a lot of the pieces of the puzzle here. 

Let’s take a closer look at the difference a strong refinance monitoring software can make for your team. 

From drudgerous data entry to carefree connection

Whether you turn to technology or not, developing a system helps you arrive at an effective way to identify potential refi candidates. 

Some teams try to keep it simple and make spreadsheets or text documents to list out past borrowers who might want to refi. That can require quite a bit of data entry. Even if you export the list from your CRM, your loan officers might have their own notes to add. 

Then, you have to maintain the list. As borrower parameters change (e.g., their equity amount, their desired rate), someone needs to do the work to input that data. 

You could spend more time creating and updating the monitoring tool than actually using it. 

Or you can go another route. You can choose to use refinance monitoring software. 

A good one (like Dream Rate) creates a seamless connection between your CRM and your product pricing engine (PPE). Then, the software pulls borrowers parameters from your CRM and compares them against the rates your team can actually offer. By linking potential borrowers with their potential rates, Dream Rate takes a lot of the legwork out of flagging good leads. 

From scanning spreadsheets to visibility into what’s valuable

Maybe you manage to create the document listing potential refi candidates. Then comes the work of monitoring all of those people against what the market’s doing. You could assign a specific team member to take that on, or tell each of your loan officers that they’re responsible for their own leads. Either way, your team needs to spend time and energy monitoring your refinance repository. 

While refinance activity is slow, that probably won’t be a problem. But as it ticks up — something we’re already seeing — you want your team free to handle the influx of leads. 

With refinance monitoring software like Dream Rate, you get a way to automate all of the work of watching over leads and flagging when it’s time for next steps. You get a real-time, really accurate look at which people in your database are best positioned to refinance. And your team stays freed up to handle those leads when they decide it’s time to move forward. 

From cold calls to easier entry

Perhaps best of all, Dream Rate isn’t just a refinance monitoring software. It’s also an automated outreach tool. Here’s how it works:

• You pull leads from your CRM and assign them a target rate (maybe that’s the rate at which they explicitly told you they’d be interested in refinancing, or maybe your loan officer has a sense that a 1% drop would be enough to motivate them).
• Dream Rate monitors the identified leads against rate activity from your PPE.
• Once a lead hits their “dream rate,” it sends two emails: one to your loan officer and one to the lead.

The first email — the one to your LO — tees up key information about the lead. This heads-up completed with outreach prep should make next steps easier for your team members.

Just as powerfully, the second email surfaces the refinance opportunity for the lead. It alerts them to the potential savings opportunity in front of them thanks to current rates. 

This way, when your loan officer gets in touch, they’re not going in cold. Instead, the lead knows what’s on offer. The LO’s initial contact then becomes a helping hand to any borrowers interested in exploring the refi. 

On top of all of this, Dream Rate enrolls leads in weekly rate alert emails once they hit their target rate. This way, if they’re not quite ready to take action at the initial ping, it keeps refinancing on their radar. 

Want to see what Dream Rate could do for your team? To try this refinance monitoring software for yourself, schedule a demo with our team today. 

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