First off...like many of you I love Seth Godin's books (Purple Cow, Free Prize Inside, The Dip, All Marketeers Are Liars) and insight.  He sees what we all see, he is just able to tell us what we see better than we can see it.

I have spent a couple hours each day this week going through the archives of his blog looking for specific references to either the Real Estate or Mortgage industry and I came across this post, The Scarcity Shortage .

Here is a paragraph from that post:

It seems as though once a category becomes successful, the headlong rush to knock it off is stronger (and quicker) than it ever was before. Last week, a woman who came to a seminar in my office was desperately searching for a way to improve her mortgage-brokerage business. I ruined her day when I suggested that she shut her company down and try something else. Twenty years ago, most mortgages were written by the local bank. Those banks planted the seeds of their obsolescence when they eliminated judgment from the writing of mortgages. Once they could automate a mortgage application, so could everyone else. So mortgage brokers used their low overhead and quick wits as an advantage and stole the business. Today, there are an infinite number of brokers to choose from, all offering essentially the same service. The result is that there is no scarcity, and no profit.

Wow.  This kind of blew me away, but honestly it does make sense.  Why keep competing and working harder, better, cheaper for less and less.

Please pass this post on to as many as you can, because I would really like to hear as much feedback from all of you as possible. 

John