The Past - As practitioners in the real estate industry, not one of us is unfamiliar what with has already happened leading up to and the result of the sub prime crisis.

The Present - We are all pretty much in tune with the almost daily ideas being suggested by underwriters, mortgage purveyors, Congress and others. Everyone has ideas, testing the waters for that one stroke of brilliance that will act as a magic pill to solve the whole problem, one step at a time, one sweep at a time or even one huge brush stroke and make the problems all disappear.

The Future - Depending on who’s idea(s) win out, the course for the future of the mortgage market will probably be a lot different than it is today. That future could be filled with new opportunities as the skilled learn the new required steps for making it all seamlessly come together. Or it could be an ultra new “hybrid” type of market, a different set of rules for nearly every kind of situation imaginable, difficult to learn and even more so for the mortgage professionals to manage.

Taking a step back, let’s be clear where we were and why the market was so robust that it increased homeownership from a national average of approximately 50% to about 65% over a five or six year period. As the days roll on, that number is declining back though it is doubtful it will ever fall to anywhere near the 50% level again.

The perception during that run up period was that housing prices would continue to escalate forever and was reinforced daily by the statistics of skyrocketing sales and prices to match. With that no longer being our reality today, where are we now on that statistical scale? It has left us with falling home prices, fewer buyers in the market place, fewer home sales, and more uncertainty than in the past 20 years.

By the end of 2007 there were over 2 million foreclosure filings and 400,000 had already lost their homes. Now as bad as that sounds by the end of 2008, that may look like a ‘not so bad’ number comparatively speaking.
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