The One Thing Podcast: "Education, Expectations & Communication" with Abdel Khawatmi

Joe Wilson: I'm here with Abdel Kwame today from Got Mortgages, a division of PRMV based in the lovely state of New Jersey Abdel. How you doing today? 

Abdel Khawatmi: Good, man. Thank you. Appreciate you having us on.

Joe Wilson: Good. Let's dig right in. The got mortgage secret sauce, right?

I, this is something that is so astounding to me, how you build up this brand. You've made yourself a like innovator or somebody new, something that stands out in the crowd. Right. If you had a breakdown like why your team wins with this in just three words, what would they be? 

Abdel Khawatmi: Good question. I would say education, expectations and communication, and I'll break that down even further.

Education falls down into obviously us knowing. Products, Fanny, Freddy, all that fun stuff. Non QM stuff to online presence, like how you and I connected on social media, on being able to stay consistent and I should follow up and doing all three of those things with consistency and following up on your content where, I mean, dude, there's even till this day.

I'll shoot a video and I'll get like 300 views on Instagram because Instagram is blacklisting me 'cause I front requested too many people. My content doesn't stop though, where if it doesn't really pick up too much traction on say Instagram, it might pick up traction on TikTok or Facebook or YouTube. Or LinkedIn or somewhere.

Or, I ended up downloading Threads since the TikTok potential ban and I never really deleted it. Cause you know, Threads was like, it was a spinoff, Twitter and I ended up downloading it back again.

So that's a whole other topic, but then expectations, right. I am, I am a big, big advocate for setting proper expectations with consumers, and I, I split a transaction, I might've said this to you before, into four different phases with a client.

It's the initial touch to their pre-approval, their pre-approval to finding a home. They're under contract to closing, and then post-closing. Each one requires different sets of expectations, where the first one is a financial documents review, thorough analysis, thorough explanation, hopes and dreams. What are you looking for and all that.

The second part being like, how's the home search going? Anything pique your interest. Hey, sorry we lost out on that offer. Let's work on getting you away from being discouraged. To post-contract, which is my favorite, which is Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Updates consistently on what's going on on a contract.

Hey, appraisal's ordered, Hey, appraisal came back. Hey, loans approved. Hey, these are the conditions. My team send it out in a table format. Everyone's on there. Attorney, we need an EMD letter from you agent. We need say these addendums from you. Get it over to us. So everyone's on there, right?

And then post-closing will have various videos that are being sent out to the consumer. Hey, what's up? Happy holiday, yada, yada, yada. Pleasure working with you. Personalized to box and bestow is a new platform we started using within Encompass, so it's automatically going out to consumers. Clients are getting gifts and they're like, holy crap, this is awesome.

I mean, that basically piggybacks into communication too. Right where those are really, I would say the top three words and top three strategies that we're implementing and have been implementing for quite some time. And, and it's, it's bringing us a lot of success.

Joe Wilson: The got mortgage brand is more than just a brand. You have everything planned out and it seems like that execution, the way that you're doing that. Extends from not just like your social media presence, but your everyday life. And that's amazing. 

Abdel Khawatmi: Yeah. And you know me, I don't wear anything but my got mortgages brand, 

Joe Wilson: which is great. And dude, you're a hustler, right?

And that's what I, one of the things I love Got you the most is like, you know how to work hard, right? So let's talk about this LL Hustle test, right? If you dropped like a brand new loan officer in a market, let's say, you know, Topeka Kansas, right? Zero leads. Zero contacts, zero social presence. What's the exact like first move they should do?

Abdel Khawatmi: I love that. The first thing I do when we sit down with our loan officers is I have them go through actually like a got mortgages training university where we're gonna first identify what are the resources that are accessible to you. Because everyone has a million different tools, and PRMG is awesome at giving us all the tools.

And I'm sure there's great companies out there that are like that as well. But what are the tools that you're going to use to be successful? And actually, even before we do that, I. We need to identify your business into three avenues, which is sales, service, and support. Mm-hmm. So what resources are you going to use towards sales?

So lead generation for both consumer and B2B, and then identifying B2B. It's not just real estate agents. We want to go after it's financial advisors, it's CPAs, it's divorce attorneys, it's title, it's. Various different professionals that can be that advocate for you to a real estate professional, allowing you to grow that much more.

And then on your service side of your business, right, is really where it comes down to. Do you have the right support staff? And if you're a loan officer, even if you have no idea what you're talking about. Who is going to help me follow up on behalf of my clients? Are there sales admins that can do that for me, or am I the one that's supposed to do that?

And if I have to do that, at what [00:05:00] point do I have to get to, in order for me to be able to have the ability to delegate? Whether it's closing a million dollars in volume a month, or doing anything like that, at what point, because I don't want to be in this business two years or three years, or two months down the road doing the same exact activities.

I need to be able to delegate to somebody else. Right. And then the last thing is support, which is again, what avenues of social media and online exposure, Google. Google Pay per Click. Can you help set up your agents on Google Local services ads? Obviously your typical Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube videos.

Do you have platforms like Social Coach and various different avenues that you're gonna shoot content time block it right within your calendar for those three sales services, support, and execute thereafter? 

Joe Wilson: That's a lot like, which is awesome. The way that you rip that out so fast tells me you have this.

Down pat, right? You could take anybody and make this work 

Abdel Khawatmi: of all those things was the first thing to do. Write down the the access to tools and resources that you [00:06:00] have. We'll sit down together and figure out a plan, how to execute them. 

Joe Wilson: Take the minute 

Abdel Khawatmi: to step 

Joe Wilson: back, do your thing. I love it. I love it.

Alright, what's one piece of common wisdom in the mortgage industry? You think is absolute nonsense. Dude, there's a lot.

Abdel Khawatmi: Um, I would probably say there is no one size fits all mortgage, right? Yeah. And there is no one size fits all interest rate. So, you know, so many times we sit, I sit down with a consumer, like I said, we'll go through those four stages. By the time I'm in that third stage, before I lock their interest rate, I'll be like, Hey, so we need to jump on Zoom.

We need to do what's called an advisory call and really pick what interest rate works best for you. And I'm, I'm sure there's ma many solid professionals that do that. So what we will do is we will basically do our research in advance, right? And find out, okay, if I was to lock this consumer at say six and a half.

Right. They have to pay say, one and a half points versus if I lock a consumer at say, 7%, they maybe are at par and they don't have to pay anything, right? The average consumer, if I lead immediately and say, Hey, I got six and a half or seven, which one do you want? Of course you're gonna pay six and a half because it sounds cooler.

But if I sit there and tell you, Hey, now you're gonna pay an extra 200 bucks a month, and your breakeven point is say, in 10 years, we will more than likely refi before that, here's your breakeven point and here's how much you're saving upfront versus how much you're paying a little bit more monthly.

Does that make sense? And I have seen that, you know, many consumers are like, well, the immediate conversations, what's my interest rate? And my response every single time is, I have no idea. In order for me as a mortgage professional, to give you a real accurate answer, there's something called the four Cs.

So I need to identify your credit score. I need to identify what you're purchasing, so you're collateral. I need to identify your capital, how much money you're expecting to put down, so your loan of value will be identified. And then the last thing I need to understand is your capacity to repay the loan.

Does it make sense to put 20% down versus 15% down? Because right now, conventional, I. Interest rate, loan level price adjustments are actually better putting 15% down versus 20% down, which many people don't know really. Yeah. Yeah. The loan level price adjustments, depending on your credit score, if you're putting 15% down, the rate risk credit is actually a little bit better because you're gonna have temporary mortgage insurance.

So it's less of a risk than if you put 20. So there's so many conversations I have with the client. So you tell me, Mr. Consumer. I am not gonna tell you the interest rate, monthly payment cash to close, which option makes better sense for you, and then you'll be surprised 99% of the time slightly pick the higher interest rate because it makes more financial sense.

Now if you have the capital to burn and or, or spend, I should say, and you necessarily don't want to have paid more capital gains or whatever the case may be, then you put a little bit more money down, maybe buy an extra point or so in order to get the lowest monthly payment budget for yourself. So. Yeah.

Joe Wilson: That's awesome. I love that what you were talking about earlier is that empathy and, and creating a custom experience for every single borrower. And, you know, I think that's the difference in, in a and risk of upsetting some really powerful companies.

Um, I'm gonna go ahead and just say anyway, I think that's the benefit of a retail person, you know, expert.
At the local level versus an online company and 'cause you don't get that personalization you don't like. Yeah, you can pick your rate, but you don't have any understanding or help of walking through that. This is the biggest financial decision that people are gonna make in their lives and they don't have an expert along with them kind of locked in hands.

They may make the wrong choice, and I think the case in point with you putting down 15 versus 20% where that might make sense for you. That blew my mind, dude. [00:10:00] I had never even thought or considered that I would be like, I don't want PMI, I'm gonna put at least 20% down. 

Abdel Khawatmi: And there's, you know, even some people are like, Hey, I don't want to pay a PMI.

And then it's usually like, well, why the hell don't you wanna pay PMI, uh, it's like a hundred bucks a month. Or Or 50 bucks a month, I could save you 40 grand. Right on 5%. Yeah. Now you can also prepay your mortgage insurance if you really wanted to, or we had to do it from a qualification perspective. And the difference on the cost of doing a single premium upfront mortgage insurance is actually cheaper than the entire 5% down.

So if it really makes you feel better, we can look at that option too. Right. But. I, I would be remiss to not tell you about it, you know, and not educate you about it. And then you could tell me, go kick rocks and we'll stick to the status quo and the plan at hand. Or we could really start veering and starting to look that option too.

How many states are you licensed in? So with PRMG work throughout the nation, but personally directly, my heavy focus of the business is Jersey, pa, Florida, and it's really Jersey, pa, right? Yeah. It's not about how many. Businesses that you have, or how many locations that you have, or any of that stuff, right?

It's just being that hyperlocal professional that you mentioned a couple seconds ago. Yeah. And then really focusing on that I think is just uber critical, rather than being able to just, you know, wanting to put your hand in this basket and that basket and then really end up doing a little bit of nothing.

So. That's awesome. 

Joe Wilson: That's awesome. 

Abdel Khawatmi: All right, 

Joe Wilson: let's, let's transition. We're gonna go to rapid fire round, so I'm gonna ask a question. You're gonna answer it, and we're gonna, it's gonna be fun. All right. What's the most overrated thing loan officers stress about closings? Most underrated way to build a mortgage business?

Branding. Biggest mistake los make when trying to scale, not doing it at all. That's a good one. Yeah. If you could only market yourself in one way, what would it be? Uh, social media, short form video content. Let's go. 

Joe Wilson: Last one. One thing Los should stop doing immediately?

Abdel Khawatmi: Talking about themselves and advocating for the consumer and live scenarios of what they have going on.

Joe Wilson: I love it. Alright, Abdel, how can people in PA in Jersey get in touch with you?

Abdel Khawatmi: Oh anywhere really. 'cause you can refer 'em to your, to your favorite lender. Got mortgages.com. You could find me online. We are accessible throughout all multiple social media channels and, and we're here cranking away. 

Joe Wilson: Awesome. Hey, thanks a lot man. Appreciate you.