What's in Your Attitude?

I don't know about most of you but I am pretty tired of the Captital One advertising campaign about "What's in your wallet?".  At the moment the answer is nothing.  But that's for another story.  But just like a lot of advertising gimmicks or phrases ("Can you hear me now?" comes to mind) it tends to stick in our brains whether we want it to or not.

So what is in your attitude?  Catch phrases and cliches are interesting.  "When the going gets tough the tough get going!"  Of course there are thousands more.  We face difficult times right now.  Not impossible, not desperate, but certainly difficult.  On a Friday I am used to looking forward to the weekend when I could expect phone calls from subdivisions and customers about clients or the houses that they had found.  Discussing qualifcations, rates, terms, payments, and how much the down payment would....or wouldn't be.  Setting up appointments for next week, e-mailing Good Faith Estimates and loan application packages.   That seems to have dropped off a bit lately....

There is certainly still business.  But my time is not quite as consumed as it has been.  So I have choices.  I could sit around and mope a little.  I could feel depressed, wonder who is to blame for the situation we find ourselves in, or rant at the world in general.  But I am really not into wasting my time or using it in counter productive ways.  I like challenges.  So I consider the current situation a challenge.

What new things can I try?  Who is out there that I have not met yet?  Where is the business being done?  What is the future and where will the market be?  How can I maximize the remaining programs and current structure to make more loans work, get more deals done, and set myself apart from others?  All of this can be quite fun.

I have been in the business for some time and have been through downturns before.  One things I see is that this is much like other times I have been through in that the area of the market that needs to come to life is the first time homebuyer.  We have plenty of people who would like to buy and move up (or even move down in some cases) but can't sell their homes to do so.  So we have a log jam being created.  Once we break that jam and more first time home buyers get into the market making decisions and buying the flow will begin to loosen up all down the line. 

That then brings up how do we get them financed?  It is not as easy at is was.  Well that's not totally true.  We are back to basics.  FHA, down payment assistance, (and this brings back government assisted programs), people actually having money for down payment, etc.  But it's doable.  It may take a little more time and effort to figure out....but challenges are fun.  Particularly if you know how to overcome them!

So my attitude is that I enjoy the challenge.  It is a beautiful Friday, I look forward to the weekend and the potential for calls from subdivisions and customers, but if they aren't forthcoming I will continue to work on the challenges we face! 

I hope that you have a smile on your face, and that your day and your weekend will be filled with the best of attitudes!