The numbers are in and Florida is ranked 37 in the nation by creditworthiness for mortgage applications…that's right 37. That's a low number folks, considering there's 50 states in the country.

The national average credit score is 682, which is generally considered "fair" by the major credit bureaus and lending institutions that make credit decisions based on these scores. In the state of Florida, the average applicant's credit score is a 672, 10 points below the national average. The minimum qualifying credit score for, let's say a conventional loan products is 620, and for FHA loans, 580 – resulting in a relatively thin margin separating qualified homebuyers from unqualified applicants.

I've been all too aware of how much more difficult on average a Florida homebuyer is to qualify than most other areas around the country, and it's the primary reason I designed and implemented what I believe to be the most thorough and extensive pre-approval process in the industry – we do all the heavy lifting up front, so that all the facts are delivered to our real estate partners, and their clients, on a silver platter with everything they need to know for how to best spend their time with any particular client.

The reality is this solution is not cheap; in fact it's very expensive – take it from me! Which is why the majority of other lenders in the country don't implement this same type of system – for the typical lender it makes more sense to gamble with your time, the real estate agents time, then it does to invest the money into ensuring their real estate partners are maximizing their energy where it's needed most.

So what does this mean? Follow me on this for a moment…

This is our application data and the numbers we follow here within my team structure. Let's say you have 100 prospective South Florida homebuyers looking to buy a home. On average 70 of them can do exactly what they want to do today, meaning, buy the home they want to buy on the terms they want to buy it. So 70% are usually good to go. But what about the other 30%? The other 30% fall into 3 different buckets:

1. The client will have to reduce their purchase price in order to qualify;
2. They'll have to fix something within their credit profile and purchase over the next 2-4 months; or
3. They will not be in a position to purchase a home for at least a year.

With that in mind, let's take a moment to think about how that impacts the day-to-day of you as a realtor vs the lender.

If a lender doesn't have a thorough pre-approval process, they will look at the basics of the clients paperwork and generate a pre-approval based on some DU results, then hope and bank that client falls into that 70% bucket.

Now as a real estate agent, you take that homebuyer and search for homes that fit their criteria – as the agent, you now have to physically leave your office, and go from house to house in the hot Florida sun during unusual hours to support the work schedules of your clients. After that preapproval letter is issued, hours of your time goes into finding the right home for the client and submitting an offer…all this with a 30% chance of failure – let's call it what it is, there is, typically on average, a 30% that all of the work you've done will be for nothing when a contingency that could have been identified upfront brings your transaction to a complete halt.

So what happens to the lender at that point? Well technically the pre-approval letter that they give has some type of verbiage saying "subject to further review"…

They'll tell you how it's a numbers game right? You win some you lose some and that no lender could have possibly identified any type of problem like this up front…but they don't have any skin in the game with you, but they confidently await your next referral.

For the last 7 years I have invested heavily in the most thorough and extensive pre-approval process in the industry. So thorough and so valuable, that in multiple offer scenarios our clients win well over 95% of the time. Yes, over 95% of the time. That's because we've developed a reputation in this market, a market more difficult to find qualified buyers than most other places in the country, with a reputation for ensuring that the homebuyer submitting an offer has had an extensive review of their background with a high likelihood for an approval in a short period of time – we're issuing loan commitments in 7 days and closing transactions in 24 days or less. Listing agents know when they receive a pre-approval letter from my team that it's worth its weight in gold. Buyers agents know when they receive a full pre-approval their clients can rest assured knowing they have all the facts and figures of their scenario because our team has put in all the time and energy up front whether they're looking to buy today, 6 months from now or 2 years from now.

There's a better way for your clients and for your business, and it's available to you 7 days a week from 8:00am – 9:00pm 364 days a year. Give us a call at 561-864-2458 

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I appreciate you joining me today, hopefully you can find a way to apply your shot into today, until tomorrow, have a better day today than yesterday.

The views of this blog, "Your Morning Shot" podcast, and on this site in general are solely those of the authors, Matt Weaver (NMLS-175651) and Zack Lewis, and do not express the views or opinions of Finance of America Mortgage.