How to Survive This Horrible Recession in Mortgage Lending

The mortgage business has been very slow recently, and it's not likely to get  better for at least a few more years.  If you're a mortgage broker, here are some tips that may help you survive on far less income.

1. If your operation is small, close your office.  Retreat back to an office in your home.  Don't worry about your image.  Every else in America is cutting back as well.
2. If your operation is too large, then retreat to a smaller, less expensive office the moment your current lease expires.  And in your next life as a mortgage company owner, never sign a long term lease!  Sign short term leases with lots of options to extend.
   
3. If you have dozens of loan agents, you don't need an assigned desk for every one.  Instead, provide desks for about 30% of the number of loan officers currently working full or part-time for your company.  Each desk just needs a phone and a networked computer.  No one gets an assigned desk. In real life, only a handful of your loan agents will ever be working the floor at any one time anyway.  This allows you to lease far less space and keeps your overhead down.
4. Make sure your loan agents know how to arrange both home loans and commercial loans.  You need to be able to make some dough from any lead.  The cheapest way to teach your staff how to arrange commercial loans is to order our nine-hour video training program.  This way any new loan agents can quickly be taught commercial mortgage finance.
5. If you have a large mortgage company with lots of loan agents, you can hire me to fly out and train your entire staff in one nine-hour training session.  The cost is $6,000.  More on this ...
6. If you are going to broker commercial loans, concentrate on the do-able deals.  For example, international commercial loans never close.  Don't waste your time.
7. Don't work on construction loans.  If the developer had enough cash into the deal, his own bank would have made the loan.  Invariably the construction loan requests received by mortgage brokers are deals where the developer doesn't have enough skin in the game.  They are a waste of time.
8. Unless you have been brokering commercial loans for at least five years, don't work on commercial loans larger than $5 million.  Any investor strong enough to borrow $5 million knows fifty bankers personally.  If the deal was do-able, they would have done the loan for him.  These large deals are pipe dreams that waste your time.
9. Buy commercial mortgage leads from C-Loans.  They cost only $1 to $3 each, plus 37.5 bps. if the deal closes.
   
10. Focus your extra time on developing a marketing list (direct mail, fax or email) of contracts who can refer deals to you.  The best commercial leads are the ones that come from referrals.