People often ask me what I believe is the single biggest hindrance to a new mortgage loan officer's success. I respond without hesitation and say, "For a new mortgage loan officer to succeed they must be willing to change and adapt with the industry. They need to know what their job is and be willing to learn what it takes to succeed." Status quo and doing what they were doing a year ago will certainly doom them in today's mortgage marketplace.

The last 6 months to a year, the mortgage industry is different than it has ever been before. In fact, it is so different; many people don't understand their job anymore. I believe that as an LO, you have to have an understanding of what your actual job is and at least some basic training requirements necessary to succeed in the industry before you can set yourself up to actually be a loan officer.

Before you can hang up a sign that says, "I'm a mortgage broker or I'm a loan officer", ...thinking that because it's easy to get a license and to become a loan officer, you need to realize that in the mortgage industry it's not always easy to know what is required of you, unless you have the proper training.

It used to be straightforward to be a "loan officer" and the industry formerly would support people who didn't have a concept of what they were doing. This was because the mortgage industry simply could not hire enough people to take all of the mortgage applications. There were millions and millions of loans being written and virtually any "warm body" could write them.

The AE's helped the new LO's, their lenders helped them; when they needed help, they had someone that they could call to "bail them out".

Because two-hundred thirty-six lenders have dropped by the wayside in the last year and the market is as tight as it has been in years, most companies cannot afford to pay for AE's or Reps to do the work that the LO's should be doing.

These companies have a fraction of the mortgage activity that they use to have. Consequently, they have underwriters who are completely overwhelmed by the influx of government loans because this seems to be the product more of our lenders are encouraging.

The real problem comes when you couple the emphasis on FHA and VA government loans in the industry with LO's who are trying to submit government loan applications and think they can submit them like they did during the sub-prime era. This is unconditionally no longer the case.

So what you have are people who have no experience submitting government loans that are presenting documents to more than one lender because they may have been denied previously. Quite often the LO needs to restructure and re-submit the loan, basically because the loan officer doesn't really understand how to properly submit the 1003.

They don't understand because they were never forced to learn during the crazy days of the sub-prime marketplace.

History has thrust us into a position where our loan officers now need to know how to originate loans. LO's all over the country are sitting by themselves with a very limited support system, which is made up of fewer "support" people than it ever has had in the past.

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