Giving Homeowners the Right Tools, with AmeriFirst Financial Inc.'s Darik Tolnay

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“It’s information homeowners actually want to know… it leads them to reach out to their agent, or to me as their lender.”

—Darik Tolnay, AmeriFirst Financial Inc. Senior Mortgage Loan Officer

Darik Tolnay, Senior Mortgage Loan Officer and leader of Team Tolnay of AmeriFirst Financial Inc., has spent over a decade learning the ins and outs of the real estate markets of California and Colorado. He has specific expertise in the highly competitive, fast-moving housing market of Denver and has even received the 5280 Five Star Mortgage Professional Award.

Our partnership with him for the past year has been nothing short of delightful, and we are grateful to Darik for sharing his honest feedback on Homebot in this testimonial. We asked Darik to discuss the aspects of our product that have most profoundly impacted him and his business, and what parts of Homebot he has found to provide the most value. Similar to other lenders, he emphasized the ease of conversation instigation and lead generation, but introduced a new perspective by including his experience as both a lender and as a homeowner using Homebot.

Leads that are led to you

Many homeowners will admit that they don’t really know the first thing about making real estate related financial decisions — that’s why we have lenders and agents. However, homeowners truly want to understand this domain. The world of claims, closings, and contracts is a foreign land to a lot of consumers, which only leaves them feeling more overwhelmed in the already stressful time that is buying or selling a home. Homeowners want the industry knowledge that their lenders can give them, and Darik has learned how to optimize this desire with Homebot:

“[Homebot digest] is information that homeowners want to know. They want to understand their value. They want to understand what they can do with their equity. And, it leads them to reach out to their agent, or me as their lender.”

Darik has discovered that by sending his leads or existing clients our automated home digests detailing home value, equity, and more, he can spark new real estate aspirations and inspirit them to reach out for his partnership in making a transaction. Through Homebot, the leads are led back to Darik.

It’s not just homeowners who are reaching out, though. Agent acquaintances of Darik have been contacting him left and right, hoping to get set up with a Homebot co-sponsorship. He recounted a typical occurrence, saying, “I’ve gotten text messages on my phone on Saturday morning from a borrower that I closed a deal on two years ago, saying, ‘hey, so-and-so wants to know their home value, you might want to reach out to them.’” Essentially, Homebot is working to capture leads and provoke transactions, even when Darik is away from the office.

The value we provide

Being both a lender and a homeowner, Darik has access to two sides of Homebot. His career benefits from his Homebot subscription, but he also gets to experience the product he supplies his own clients for himself: the monthly home digest. As he stated in the testimonial, the information in the digests is highly relevant and functional to the average homeowner.

“I actually get to see an estimated value of what my home is worth, I get to see how much equity is there, and I get to see what I could maybe do with that equity if I wanted to buy an investment property.”

The Homebot digest presents users with a lot of options and a lot of information. Darik described the digest as having information that a homeowner is “wanting to know, but maybe they just don’t know they’re wanting to know it yet.” Once they have access, though, they have the ability to dig deeper and apply their knowledge to make life-changing financial decisions with their lender by their side. This brings us back to the point we made earlier: knowledge benefits the homeowner, in turn benefiting the lender.

Darik is one of many Top Producing Loan Officers who have used Homebot to shape and support their preferred business practices. If this sounds like something that might interest you, too, you can check out a few customer testimonials to learn more. We hope to see you around soon!