Selling your mortgage broker book — the buyer's checklist

Selling a broker book is mostly an exercise in due diligence. A buyer who's serious will walk in with a checklist, ask the same 20 questions every time, and either price up or price down based on how confidently you answer them. The brokers who land the top of their valuation range are the ones who have the answers ready before the meeting; the ones who land the bottom are usually the ones who fumble.

This is the checklist itself, written from the buyer's perspective. If you can answer all of these cleanly, you've done the work.

Pre-conversation: what the buyer wants before they show up

Before any meaningful conversation, a serious buyer will want:

• Annual trail commission for the last 12 months — the headline number the multiple gets applied to.
• A loan-level export of your active book: lender, settlement date, current balance, trail rate, status, account number (redacted where needed).
• Trail commission history for the last 24 months on a monthly basis, at minimum aggregated. Loan-level history is much better.
• A signed broker agreement at your aggregator (or evidence of one) showing the commission terms.
• A clean list of any loans currently in arrears, suspension, or dispute.

If you can't produce these in a week, the buyer will assume your data isn't great and discount preemptively. Conversely, if you can produce them on the day of the first call, you've already signalled rigour.

The buyer's actual questions

The conversation tends to follow a predictable structure. The questions in order:

Book composition

• How many active loans?
• What's the average loan size?
• What's the median loan age (months from settlement)?
• What's the lender concentration — top lender share, top 3 share?
• What's the geographic spread (NSW/VIC/QLD/etc.)?
• Owner-occupier vs. investor split?

You should have these numbers off the top of your head. They're the most basic profile of the asset.

Cash flow quality

• What's the annualised run-off rate over the last 12 months?
• What's the trail income trend — flat, growing, declining?
• How many loans are currently in the clawback window (under 24 months from settlement)?
• What's your clawback exposure today — theoretical max and expected?
• Are there any missing-trail issues currently unresolved?

Buyers care about run-off most, clawback second, and trail trend third. A book with declining trail income but a clean run-off explanation can still command a good multiple. A book with a high run-off and no story can't.

Operational risk

• Are all your loans correctly attributed to you in the aggregator's books?
• Are there any pending compliance investigations, NCAT complaints, or AFCA disputes?
• What's your professional indemnity status?
• Are there any contractual commitments to specific clients (rate guarantees, fee promises) that survive a transfer?

This is usually the shortest section of the conversation when there's nothing to disclose, and the longest when there is. If anything material exists here, disclose it early — buyers find these out anyway, and finding out late kills deals.

Data and systems

• What aggregator are you on?
• Do you have a structured trail history or only the latest export?
• What CRM/system holds your client records?
• Will those records transfer cleanly?

Spreadsheet-only books take 4–6 weeks longer to diligence than books with structured history. That delay alone tends to drop the multiple by 0.1–0.2× because buyers price in the friction.

Relationship transfer

• How will the existing clients be notified of the transfer?
• Will you stay on as a consultant during the handover?
• What proportion of your book actively engages with you (responds to emails, takes calls)?
• Are there clients who deal with someone in your team rather than you specifically?

A book where the seller stays on for 6 months at a reduced engagement consistently transfers more cleanly than a book sold outright. Buyers know this and will often insist on it; sellers who refuse the structure usually take a lower price.

What buyers price up

Three things consistently command a premium:

• Long-tail loans (3+ years from settlement) with low LVR. These are the cleanest trail income — already past clawback, statistically less likely to refinance, defensive in a rate-cut market. A book where 60%+ of trail income comes from these loans grades well.
• Structured monthly history with no gaps. Not because the data is intrinsically more valuable, but because it signals that the seller knows their book and the buyer doesn't need to discover things mid-diligence.
• A demonstrably engaged client base. Quarterly contact records, recent email opens, a CRM with notes against active conversations. Buyers buy continuity, and engagement is the proxy for continuity.

What buyers price down

The persistent discount lines:

• Run-off above 12% annualised.
• Top-lender concentration above 50%.
• Arrears rate above 3%.
• More than 30% of trail income from loans settled in the last 24 months (clawback exposure).
• Spreadsheet-only data with no system of record.
• Outstanding compliance items, even minor.
• Multiple unresolved missing-trail issues — these signal sloppy reconciliation more than they signal real losses.

These are explicit lines in most buyer-side valuation models. You can address several of them with 12 months of preparation work; you can't address them in the week before a sale.

The multiple math, briefly

The typical 2026 sale multiple for a clean AU residential book is around 2.0× annual trail with a ±15% negotiating spread. Adjustments roughly:

• Run-off above 12%: -0.3×
• Top-lender concentration above 50%: -0.2×
• A-grade share above 60%: +0.2×
• Arrears above 3%: -0.5×
• Clean structured data: +0.1× implicitly (faster diligence, smoother close)

For the full methodology, see How to value an Australian trail book, and for the specific drivers see the run-off piece and the lender-concentration piece.

A 90-day pre-sale preparation plan

If you have 90 days before you start talking to buyers:

Days 1–14 — Data baseline

• Pull a 24-month monthly trail history, loan by loan.
• Reconcile every loan in the active book to the aggregator's current export.
• Resolve any missing-trail items you've been carrying.

Days 15–45 — Risk hygiene

• Update arrears flags so the buyer sees the same number you see.
• Resolve any open compliance items.
• Re-engage with clients you haven't touched in 12+ months — a few quarterly calls go a long way on the "engagement" metric.

Days 46–75 — The pack

• Build the data room: book composition table, monthly trail history, lender concentration, run-off rate, clawback exposure, arrears list, compliance attestation, broker agreement.
• Have a draft valuation done — independent of the buyer — so you know your reservation price before the conversation.

Days 76–90 — Soft outreach

• Open initial conversations. Don't commit to a process; just gauge interest.
• Refine the pack based on the questions you get asked.

By the time you're in formal sale conversations, you've answered most of the buyer's checklist preemptively.

What Trail AI does for sellers

Two things specifically. First, the valuation PDF produces an independently-generated book valuation in the format buyers actually expect: loan grading, run-off rate, lender concentration, arrears, clawback, and the resulting multiple range. Second, the comparison page walks through how the named-client missing-trail signal, AI refinance reasoning, and PDF output stack against alternatives — useful if you're choosing where to host the book data ahead of a sale.

Key takeaways

• Buyers ask the same 20 questions every time. Have the answers ready and you negotiate from strength.
• Run-off, lender concentration, and clawback exposure are the big three discount lines. Address them in the 90 days before sale, not in the meeting.
• Structured monthly trail history beats spreadsheet-only every time. The data isn't more valuable — the diligence is faster, which the buyer prices in.
• Consider staying on as a 6-month consultant during transfer; it often raises the offer.
• Disclose problems early. Finding them late kills deals.