There’s a shift happening in how consumers prepare to buy a home, and it’s moving faster than most of the mortgage industry has noticed.
Buyers are no longer starting their homeownership journey with a Google search that leads to a blog post, a Zillow listing, or a call to a loan officer. Increasingly, they’re opening an AI tool, asking a question, and getting a curated answer. In that first session — sometimes months before they’re “ready” — they form opinions about affordability, process, and trust. By the time they fill out a contact form or ask about a rate, their expectations have already been shaped.
Ethan Vieaux addresses this directly in his VieauxPoint column in Chrisman Commentary. He writes about the growing reality that well-capitalized platforms are moving further upstream in the consumer journey, embedding their content into the AI tools buyers are turning to for early research. His observation is pointed: the information shaping consumer confidence isn’t coming from a neutral source. It’s coming from platforms built around monetizing intent.
For loan officers, the implication is worth taking seriously. As Vieaux asks: “At what point are you actually entering the conversation?”
The Formative Stage Is the Most Important One
Research consistently shows that trust is established early. Consumers who feel guided and supported during the financial preparation stage — before they’ve ever toured a home — are far more likely to return to the person who helped them get ready. That’s not a new insight. What’s new is that the window for establishing that trust is shrinking, because other players are competing for it earlier than ever.
The loan officers who will be least affected by this shift are those who have already built a presence in a buyer’s life during the planning phase. Not the rate-shopping phase. Not the application phase. The “am I even ready?” phase.
That’s a harder position to earn than showing up at the point of transaction, but it’s a far more durable one.
Being Intentional About Where You Show Up
Most loan officers know the value of referral relationships, past client databases, and local community presence. Those things matter and always will. But the consumer’s pre-decision journey has extended into digital and AI-driven environments where many lenders aren’t present.
The question isn’t whether to compete with large platforms for consumer attention — it’s whether you’re offering buyers something genuinely useful during the months before they’re ready to transact. If you are, you’re their trusted advisor by the time anyone else enters the picture. If you’re not, someone else is.
FinLocker was built with exactly this challenge in mind. The platform gives loan officers a branded, value-driven tool they can put directly in the hands of future buyers — one that helps consumers track their finances, monitor their credit, and understand what homeownership readiness actually looks like. It keeps you connected to prospects during the preparation stage, so that when they’re ready to move, the relationship is already there.
No algorithm can replicate that. No upstream content strategy changes it. The loan officer who has been a buyer’s trusted resource for six months will always have an edge over the platform that served them an article.
If you’d like to see how FinLocker can help you establish that early connection with future buyers, we’d love to show you what that looks like in practice.
