Community Commentary

Transparency is the new buzz word in the financial world, especially in the mortgage industry. While government officials and financial pundits pay "TRANSPARENCY" plenty of lip service, those of us working on the front lines of origination live with it on a daily basis. The mortgage industry is at the forefront of the financial services transparency revolution. I just hope we don't become the guinea pigs of politicians.

"Social media marketing is here to stay" could very well be chalked up as the understatement of the year. Social media marketing has been on the rise for the past several years. Unfortunately, many small businesses, corporations, and independent freelancers have been slow to get on board the social networking train.

Most search engines provide two different unpaid areas where your business can appear: local business listings and web page results. Having a search engine optimization strategy that gets your business exposure in both of these areas will help you maximize your internet marketing efforts. Here are the top five no-nonsense ways to get you there:

Roughly 70% of Americans own a home. Eighty percent of wealth in America is created through real estate (i.e. home ownership). Clearly home ownership and wealth creation go hand-in-hand and a solution which brings together financial planning and homeownership makes sense.

Local is one of the top three areas of online marketing that my clients ask me about, along with search engine optimization and social media marketing. The interesting thing about local is that it is the yin to the global yang that we thought the Internet offered. While global connectivity is a result of the web, we now understand that more than 35% of all searches included some sort of local keyword phrase or intent. This fundamental understanding of how we search plays a significant role in how to effectively target local customers on the web.

As you can imagine – a lot of people ask me how I got my site to #1 on Google for a term like ‘mortgage brokers’ not to mention thousands of other high volume keyword phrases. It’s a process that anyone can achieve, but...

One simple step everyone can take to make their email efforts more compatible with their social media efforts is to link all of your emails to your social networking profiles or blogs.

Free markets function fine...when all parties understand their risks. Changes need to be made to the GSE's but not in a way that contracts, rather than expands, homeownership. Of the eleven Principles offered by the MBA only four focus on how the secondary market can improve the standards and transparency of mortgage backed assets. The rest focus on the role of the Government.

Most appraisers have an independent spirit and the idea of an appraiser union is not very appealing to them. I suppose that the same applies to Mortgage Brokers. It certainly feels like both groups have been under attack recently and at least some appraisers are becoming more receptive to the idea of a union. They are attempting to organize as the American Guild of Appraisers, part of the Office & Professional Employee International. Mortgage brokers can be represented by the same umbrella organization.

The question is one of trust. For nine months our trade group has been lobbying Congress and the GSE's to use such a work force but the question is always asked; how can we trust you guys, the mortgage industry that sold all these bad mortgage products and the modification industry that is just out there to scam the trouble homeowner?

Instead of asking if we are stealing from future demand, maybe the better question is will there be any future demand? If you agree with ex-FHFA regulator James Lockhart's outlook..will that demand even be able qualify for a mortgage? There are bigger problems than the expiration of the $8,000 tax credit. Maybe those issues should be addressed too.

Solid real estate agent relationships are the cornerstone of any professional loan originator's business plan. While the mortgage industry has done an excellent job at consumer direct marketing, home buyers still consider the real estate agent the "gatekeeper of the transaction" and even rely on them for advice on financing. This is especially true in the first-time home buyer market.

I use transparency as a weapon against the banks. I walk into a bank branch and snap a picture of their mortgage rates, on the lobby sign. I e-mail that picture with a copy of the wholesale rate sheets (from the same bank), and SHOW THE CUSTOMER HOW MUCH "SECRET PROFIT" THE BANK IS MAKING ON ITS MORTGAGES. I explain how yield spread premium can lower the portion of the mortgage brokerage fee they pay me. Sometimes, I lock the loan with the same bank and laugh along with the customer.

A combination of better and simpler disclosures from lenders, combined with the assurance of complete and accurate information from borrowers, would go a long way toward repairing the damage to the lending industry inflicted by the mortgage crisis. That said, I'd have more confidence that workable changes could be imposed if I heard an intelligent and rational discussion from our elected leaders, rather than the empty rhetoric and finger-pointing to which Americans are currently subjected.

In the past year most of us have listened to, or expressed our views, on the need for the mortgage industry to make changes. Why has so much collective interest in making something happen failed to produce any meaningful results?