Locally Famous
Who is your first-time buyer talking to?
They are choosing a lender before you know they are looking. Here is what that looks like around one community bank branch.
See your townOr jump to who is taking them or what they find when they search.
The first mortgage decides more than the mortgage.
A first-time buyer picks one lender. Then come the checking account, the savings, the car loan, the kids' accounts. Much of that follows the first signature.
So the question is not who wins this loan. It is who gets the next twenty years of that household.
The buyer is also the least likely to walk in and ask. They are afraid of asking the wrong question. They look for a name they trust. If they do not find one, they take the first lender that answers.
The Test Market Map
Around one Wisconsin branch, half the young buyers went to lenders headquartered somewhere else.
We counted every home-purchase loan to a buyer under 35 in the towns around one community bank branch, over two years. Under 35 is our stand-in for first-time buyers. Federal data does not flag them.
One branch, two years, home-purchase loans to buyers under 35. Lender names removed.
Four names made most of those loans.
The branch manager did not lose those buyers in an argument. They never had the chance to talk.
The loans are public. The names are public. We put them on one page for the bank.
Show me my branchThe Visibility Audit
Search for a mortgage lender in your town. Count the reviews.
A buyer who does not know where to go does what everyone does. They search.
We ran that search near the same branch. The lender with the most Google reviews had 601 of them. Its Google listing was 15 miles from the branch. The bank's own listing had 8.
One branch, one search for a mortgage lender. Lender names removed.
Reviews are the first reputation a stranger sees. They read as local proof. In this search the proof belongs to someone else.
You may be fine. Some banks are. The only way to know is to run the search the way a buyer would.
Show me my searchThey cannot afford for you to know their loan officer's name.
A national lender needs its loan officers to be interchangeable. That is how the model scales. Nobody there is supposed to be known.
Yours is on the chamber board. Yours coaches six customers' kids. Twenty years of showing up. In an average month that reputation reaches about four hundred people, because it travels at the speed of conversation.
It works. It is just slow, and it stops at the edge of the people who already know the name.
Three Premier Community Bank lenders. Sixty seconds each, in their own town.
We do not invent a reputation. We give the one you already have distribution.
Free
See your town first.
You do not need to believe any of this yet. Look at your own branch.
The Test Market Map
Pick one branch. We show you who made the home-purchase loans to buyers under 35 around it, and how much went to large banks and national lenders.
Show me my branchThe Visibility Audit
We run the search a buyer would run for a mortgage lender near your branch. You see who shows up and how many reviews they have.
Show me my searchNeither report makes any claim about your bank's market share. Your own bank is left off the count.
More ways to run it
Refer-a-Friend. Nine branches, eight months, 33 verified referrals.
First-time buyer video. Sixty seconds from your lender on the questions buyers are afraid to ask.