In 2018 I joined the Luxury Home Mortgage Advisor, Board of Directors after being recommended by peers. For years I have worked in a very luxurious market in South East Oakville and other suburbs across the GTA and Muskoka, creating very unique lending solutions to affluent clients with complex financial needs. After mentoring as many as 50 agents over the past few years, I realized an opportunity to give back to the industry by investing in this accreditation. The 12 week online training program provides further education and resources to help any mortgage agent/broker enhance their career. Although the accreditation is luxury based, for agents/brokers wanting to enter the world of larger more complex mortgages, the program has merit on its own, through its educational modules, curriculum, live Q&A and downloadable content, it will help any agent luxury or not with their mortgage brokering career.

After doing a careful analysis of the market and other training programs available to the market its my opinion there are limited options and it can be very costly, which is unrealistic to a large portion of the mortgage brokering industry. The other thing about this accreditation is it helps broker owners. The spreads are getting thin when recruiting and hiring mortgage agents/brokers and investing in new and unique ways to support agents/brokers is expensive, time consuming and challenging for these broker owners. This program allows these broker owners to outsource training and hire newer agents they may overlook because they don’t have the necessary training to succeed at the onset. I also believe a lot of newer mortgage agents are overlooked or have a harder time getting hired because of their lack of experience and minimal training at the onset of their career. Agents get licensed but then lack that next step in training and support. This course will help those new agents with that next step and have a higher probability for success and hopefully get hired easier if they have this accreditation.

As the program continues to garner support by the Luxury Real Estate community, the accreditation will be a unique value proposition to realtors, clients and referral sources. On top of it all, as the accreditation site gets more traffic and builds relationships with synergetic Luxury related businesses, agents that have successful passed the online training program that obtain the Luxury Home Mortgage Advisor Accreditation, will be listed and available to connect with these partners looking for mortgage agents & brokers that hold the accreditation.

scott westlake