No. 2: Dave Butler

Another long-time resident near the top of the list every year is Dave Butler, a broker with Verico Butler Mortgage Inc. in Mississauga, Ontario. Over the past four years, Dave has never finished lower than seventh and moved up from third to second this year by breaking the $200 million mark in funded volume for the first time.

Q&A WITH NO. 2 Dave Butler

CMP: If you use rate sites, do you feel you could have had those numbers not using a rate site?
Butler: I personally have never used a rate site for business. However my father and brother run a separate division of Butler Mortgage Inc. that focuses primarily on Internet leads and they write more business then I do annually, so the rate sites clearly do work.

CMP: What marketing technique do you credit the most for building your business?
Butler: As far as marketing goes, it is actually quite simple: many years ago I decided to go after a segment of the market that I felt was not a segment a lot of other brokers focused on – real estate investors. So I go out to different real estate investment clubs and pitch the fact that I specialize in working with real estate investors, know every rental program in the market inside and out, as well as having tons of value-added services for investors.

CMP: You did better this year than last, so to what do you attribute your growing success?
Butler: We attribute our year-over-year increase to the same factors as our previous years: hard work, working efficiently together as a staff, staying on top of the various product/guideline changes and making sure our clients are our No. 1 priority.

CMP: Is there one single opportunity brokers are letting slip through their fingers?
Butler: I believe a lot of brokers are fighting this ever-growing trend of more clients getting their mortgages through the Internet. We all need to be open-minded and realize that the Internet is not going anywhere, if anything the amount of clients who will be getting their mortgage through an online source will continue to grow and if you are not involved in that part of the business, then you may end up getting left in the dust.

CMP: Which product was your best performer this year?
Butler: Just like previous years, my team works mainly with real estate investors who are trying to build a portfolio of rental properties. So if there was a product that was our best performer, it would be any of the rental programs that are out there.

FSCO license: M08001279