A futuristic individual with a creative drive, Keith Uthe is a man making a difference. He is qualified, sharp, talented, and dedicated. His daily goal as a mortgage broker with Mortgage Alliance Enrich Mortgage Group is to create and cause future wealth for those he speaks with. His objective in every conversation or interaction is to impact the person’s life in a way that will help them live a life of abundance.
Apart from mortgages and real estate, Keith is knowledgeable about all fields surrounding finance and is an excellent advisor.
The dawn of his career
Keith has always been attracted to financing. Even before becoming a mortgage broker, his first hint that he had the potential required for this business was when he was finding mortgages for his home.
The advisor at the bank was telling them that their debt servicing was too high because they had a balance of about $6K on a credit card and an available personal line of credit amount (PLOC). Their policy was to include a payment for the full available PLOC amount.
However, if the credit card was at $0, then that was a $0 payment. The advisor could not figure out a solution. Keith was the one who resolved the problem of mortgage financing for their mortgage without any mortgage training. The trained banker could not come up with the solution to the debt service ratio number when Keith came up with the solution: pay off the small credit card with a personal line of credit (PLOC).
Even the advisor was surprised that Keith had come up with such a resourceful solution, and that is when they decided to continue with his idea of financing their mortgage.
Not long after that, Keith and his spouse began investing in real estate, which furthered his interest in learning about mortgages. For several years, he was not happy at his job. After many applications, he received an opportunity for a career change. He readily took the opportunity and began working as a junior underwriter for a private lender.
Just over a year after he was laid off from the position. This gave him more than a foot in the door to the financial world. His good friend/mentor/advisor, Richard Dolan, introduced him to the brokerage owner of Enrich Mortgage Group, Richard Anderson, to live a life of opportunity.
Richard Anderson and Keith got along immediately, and together they built a great friendship and business relationship.Both Richards challenge him to push his boundaries, learn and discover more about himself, to fulfil his life purpose and bring his family along for the ride that ‘All people are living a life of opportunity’.
These respected professionals saw his potential, believed in him and what he could accomplish as a mortgage broker. He took that belief, began to be in purposeful action so he could start moving the needle, and has grown his business substantially every year. He is now in the top 5% of volume for mortgage brokers nationally with Mortgage Alliance Canada and has expanded his support team to provide further service and impact to his clients.
Defining leadership in the contemporary world
For Keith, leadership is earned and not given or taken. Great leaders know how to ask the right questions that enable others to seek powerful answers that get them into action. Telling people what to do and giving them the answers does not make someone a leader. Keith believes that understanding the vision, dreams, possibilities, and opportunities are the building blocks of leadership and teamwork.
An individual who can not only show his colleagues the right path but also help them to choose the right path for themselves is a leader in the true sense.
VISIONS AND ASPIRATIONS
His vision and purpose is ‘All people are Living a Life of Opportunity’.Life is all about seizing the opportunity at the right time and with the right people. When he works with his clients or other agents, he ensures that they know this about him. This way they have a clearer picture of how he thinks and what he wants for them and their relationship. If they do not have a point in the future they are aiming for, then they can grab onto this and come along for the ride.
When your goals are aligned and you know what ignites the flame in your heart, you can not only work for the betterment of your own life but also those around you.
AWARDS AND RECOGNITIONS
His dedication, hard work, and exceptional performance have led him down the path to success. Here are a few of the prestigious moments of his career:
- 2022 Mortgage Alliance President’s Club Top 5%
- 2022 5 Diamond Award Winner Mortgage Alliance Canada
- 2022 RICH Mastery course
- 2021 Canadian Mortgage Professionals Hot List
- 2021 Mortgage Alliance Elite Club Top 10%
- 2020 Smith Manoeuvre Certified Professional
- 2020 Certified Financial Life Professional
- 2017-2020 Mortgage Alliance Master Club Top 20%
- 2017 and 2019 Real Estate Investment Network (REIN) Real Estate Professional of the Year
- 2016 Certified Real Estate Investment Advisor
- 2015 Real Estate Investment Network (REIN) Innovative Investor of the Year
Insights on recession and the future of the real estate industry
The question of whether there is a threat of recession or not can be answered based on your perspective. It depends on whether you view the glass as half empty or the glass half full. For many now is a great time in the real estate cycle to be buying as they are in a dip. It may or may not be the bottom, however, it is better than trying to buy on the climb or at the peak. Historically, real estate values go up even though they have dips along the way. A dip is only a problem if you are trying to sell or refinance in the dip.
The greatest challenge real estate faces is supply issues for both new and pre-built homes. Until they have a better handle on supply, they will continue to see great swings in the real estate market. Higher interest rates impact qualifying, a lack of supply of homes for sale, and different expectations of sellers and buyers, and when good homes do come to market, they sell quickly in some markets.
If qualifying is a challenge a borrower faces, that is another place where he comes in as a mortgage broker. He is not stuck with only the one sandbox that the bank has. He has access to many different lending solutions, and often clients do not know about them until they have a discovery call with him. For those with vision and belief in the real estate market, now is a great time to be buying. He says that rates are higher than they have been in the last 4 years, but they are nowhere near the fixed rates of 2008-2009 or even 2012.
Simplifying home ownership and mortgages
Keith is not a mortgage lender, so he feels that he isn’t directly revolutionizing mortgages. However, he would like to believe that he takes every opportunity he can get to have conversations with Presidents, VPs, and Managers about changes or different lending products that can contribute to a change in the system.
What he aims to revolutionize is the concept of how a mortgage broker can be defined. A mortgage broker ought to see themself as more than an app filler and document reviewer. A mortgage is likely the single largest debt they will take on in their life and the home is the largest one-time investment. Therefore, it is his role as a mortgage broker to help ensure that everything fits into the client’s hopes, plans, and dreams. The last thing he wants to hear is how their mortgage is getting in the way of their dream because he did not ask enough or the right questions and recommended a mortgage that did not work with their goals, plan, and dreams.
To help achieve this for others in 2021, he created the High-Performance Lab for Mortgage Brokers to help them understand what it truly means to be a high-performer, get a deeper understanding of self, how to ask better questions to build more trust with clients through conversation,” says Keith. The program is weekly with bi-weekly presentations of information with alternating weeks of a mastermind where students can present problems and openly share the ideas that have helped themselves and can help others.
He discovered that one’s own limiting beliefs will come through in a conversation with clients without them even realizing it. This, in turn, has an enormous impact on the trusted relationship that the broker is trying to build with their clients.
Through an increased understanding of one’s self, one’s values, beliefs, and the Four Keepers, one begins to realize what it takes to ask better questions, be in action, and build trust.
“How can anyone try to move the needle for themselves in life from A to B if they do not know truly where A is for them?” asks Keith. “This only comes from doing the work to better understand yourself and where you are now, then stating where you want to be, and committing to the small actions that will get you to B. Only then will they begin to see what it is like to be in High-Performance, more often than not.”
Through his continual learning, training, and experience as a Smith Manoeuvre Certified Mortgage Professional, Certified Financial Life Professional, and Real Estate Investor, Certified Real Estate Investment Adviser is part of what he offers his clients that they are not able to find from any other mortgage broker.
Every conversation needs to consider KPI.
- Keep People Ignited
- Keep People Informed
- Keep People Interconnected
- Keep People Intrigued
- Keep People Interested
- Keep People Investing
ADVICE TO THE NEXT GENERATION OF LEADERS AND CHANGEMAKERS
He would like to inspire the next generation by saying:
Always be active.
Understand what prevents them from becoming a greater version of themselves.
Don’t allow the three keepers to run the show.
Use business networking to grow your network and net worth.
Get yourself a business coach.
Define your life’s purpose!
