In a Room Full of Mortgage Originators

I'm back from the IMBA annual meeting. I'm a little glazed over with all the information and frankly, the crap that I had to listen to over the last day and a half. I love doing mortgages. I love helping people realize their goal of homeownership. I love helping people get out of financial quicksand or help them realize another long term goal (such as funding college educations or buying a dream home). I love the challenge of those ugly loans getting completed. What I can't stand are other mortgage originators.

Whenever I am in a room with other mortgage originators I just sit and watch them. It is amazing to see just how important they think they are. You should have seen the blackberries and elbow rubbing these people do. No wonder mortgage loan officers are considered less reliable than members of Congress. No lie, that was a Gallup survey from a few years ago.

First, all most of these people care about is what loan can fetch them the most money and not get them in trouble. Meeting the consumer's needs is just a facade to make them feel better about themselves. One of the speakers, an a-hole of the highest regard, called his loan office "a practice" so it is on par with other professions such as a law or doctors office. He insisted that he was a "Mortgage Planner" to make the mortgage part of the entire financial plan of an individual and not a transaction. He wasn't a loan officer or loan originator, oh no, he was so much more than that. He called his customers "clients", not borrowers. I get what he was trying to say, but that is all just window dressing to me. Shut up and tell me something profound.

This a-hole of the highest regard was great with his ideas for the high end customer. He discussed strategies for people with large amounts of equity or large down payments. He had partnered with financial planners, estate attorneys, and CPAs to create a one stop financial shop. The problem is, is that this is Indiana. I deal with large amounts of equity and down payments on a small scale. And when I do have those situations, they rarely fit the types of transactions he was discussing. Talk about missing your target audience. But to his credit he was a great presenter. Funny, engaging, and well prepared. No doubt that he was very smart and very successful at what he does.

Then he had to sit at my table to lunch. What is the first thing out of his mouth? He complained about people who called his "practice" and just wanted a rate and good faith estimate. And I quote, "I could care less about them. I just put it together and hope they go somewhere else." Nice. Then for the next two hours I listened to his buddy talk about FHA mortgages (good products) and that they paid very nice yield spreads.

I left when the a-hole of the highest regard was going to tell everyone how to read a tax return. They had to go into this because most originators over the last few years just put self employed borrowers into stated income, no ratio, or no doc loans. Again, nice. This is one originator that knows how to document income from a tax return. Why? Because I used the products that were available to me correctly and a self employed borrower didn't always need to be put into a stated income loan. I'm not lazy as many originators are.

I guess that I'm just jaded today. I've never been about the money or about pushing myself as some big hot shot. Maybe I do by writing this blog. Maybe I should cut the a-hole of the highest regard some slack.

But I don't think my anger is misplaced. I really don't. And what I came away from this meeting today? Even though the market has changed for the better, the people running the game are still looking for additional ways to squeeze a buck out of the person sitting in front of them.

Bad times all around.