There isn?t enough demand to support the crumbling independent originators and probably not even 50% of the national lenders. There will only be two options for you to survive 1)work with a regional bank who doesn?t rely on outside funds of Freddie or Fannie, and has deposits or 2) a large national lender looking to beef up their retail operations if they are still in business after Q2 2008.

Simply put there will be no funds available to your business in the coming months, it doesn?t matter how great you or your business is. Wall Street has learned a lesson of having zero accountability on the origination side of the mortgages and WILL NOT OPEN the secondary market up again, EVER to brokers or correspondents. In fact major wall street brokers are laying off their entire CDO staffs, there is no need for their services any longer, the secondary market is dead. These are facts you MUST pay attention to.

I know most of you have subscriptions to mortgage originator magazine. Just a few months ago their rag had 140 pages chock full of lenders and articles, this issue 40 pages (by far the most informative issue since it was void of loan program ad clutter). I encourage you to grab a copy. There are several articles that speak to what I?m telling you. Take a hint, read business news sources and find other avenues if you want to one day eat something other than ramen noodles.

This is not ?a couple of quarters and things will return to normal? scenario we have on our hands. This will be a mass overhaul of the mortgage business model where there is no place for brokers and correspondents with no skin in the game. Business models change in America and the broker and correspondent models will equate to the buggy whip business that died at the hands of the automoblie. You may not think it?s fair but this is how capitalism works. The sooner you come to this realization the sooner you will be on your path to prosperity. Last one to leave please turn off the lights.

1) Good decent mortgage professionals who have ALWAYS cared about their clients are now able to make a good living and not have to compete with creeps.

2) Those slick, a-whole mtg salesmen who sold their clients high-cost mortgages when it was not necessary will be financially ruined, will have spent all of their fast money, FOOLISHLY believing this to be an unending trend, and consigned to a lifetime of jobs that pay far less, while it tears them to pieces inside, as they remember their one brief fling with ’success’.

Honestly, I hate group 2. I would make popcorn and go watch the sheriff throw them out of their house. “Wailing and gnashing of teeth” is the phrase that comes to mind.

True story – we did have one LO get his 5-series repo-ed from our parking lot, in full view of everybody at the closing, just after he had broker-credited half his YS away.