I was talking with one of my loan officers yesterday who was struggling with putting deals together and finding leads. He was telling me how hard things are and how it seems like lenders are constricting their guidelines. True. He mentioned how difficult it is to put loans together. True. He talked about the credit issues, lack of down payment, and general shortage of commitment on the part of clients. True.
And then this popped into my head. Yes, 2 years ago, you could squeeze one lemon and get a gallon of lemonade in return, but in this challenging market, you've got to squeeze 10 lemons to get a glass. He looked at me kind of funny and then a tiny smile appeared in the corner of his mouth.
So the question is, "Are you going to keep squeezing?" If you're a realtor, you need to list 5-10 times as many listings to get the results you want. For us in the mortgage profession, we've got to talk with 10 times as many people and take triple or quadruple the applications to get one loan to the closing table. Does this mean there isn't any business? Of course not. But how bad do you want it?
I guess it's up to me to determine the daily, even hourly, disciplines of squeezing. What does that look like for your profession? For me, it's picking up the phone. It's marketing my past client data base. It's attending networking events and real estate clubs and board meetings. So I ask whoever is reading this, "Are you going to keep squeezing?"
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