The bustling world of mortgage broking never seems to slow down and with that comes a range of roadblocks. This month, we asked brokers: What are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced as a broker?
Quiet activity post-COVID-19
THERE HAVE been a few factors since COVID-19 that have made Victoria a very difficult market for property developers, starting obviously with COVID-19 and the supply chain issues.
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The lockdowns, which funnily enough, the building industry probably did better than most during the lockdowns, it was one of the industries that was able to carry on for most of that period.
But at the same time, the supply chain issues were causing building material costs to skyrocket, among other challenges facing developers.
We’re still seeing plenty of activity, but it’s probably a little quieter in terms of construction than in previous years.
Cameron Perry, Perry Finance
Managing a dispersed team
THE BIGGEST challenge that we’ve had since the pandemic is everyone being so dispersed. One of the ramifications of having two offices in Sydney is that it has spread the team out significantly.
You lose a bit of that collaborative nature where you can chat about things and workshop deals. The Melbourne office is probably a slightly more difficult challenge because it’s probably too small to grow its own culture, there’s only about four people down there.
What we find is either Matt, my colleague Ryan or myself are going down there around fortnightly and spending at least two or three days down there.
We’re definitely still scratching our heads about it all the time, so I’d love for someone to share their secrets with us! It’s a work in progress.
Jean-Pierre Gortan, Simplicity Loans & Advisory
Finding the right staff
I THINK the biggest challenge has been to get to a point where there are known processes.
There’s always a documented way of doing things and I think that’s probably the biggest challenge to get other people used to.
When you work on your own, you just have it all in your head.
So, bringing on staff and getting them up to speed with your process as well as getting the business to the point where it can keep running without you has definitely been the biggest challenge for me so far.
Rob Barton, Strawberry Finance
Too much on your plate
I THINK one of the most challenging aspects of being a broker, for me personally, is to not be able to provide the best service to my customer.
Sometimes I will find myself getting too busy and tied up with something else and, as a result, I’m not able to provide the right service to my customer.
It’s definitely the type of challenge that will bring me down straight away when it happens.
It’s one of the things we’re working on right now, because we always want to make sure we’re capturing every opportunity to provide the best possible service that we can.
Shubham Bhaskar, Sheel Capital
