A lot of mortgage brokers and bankers are pondering where the market is heading and what they should be doing.

Despite the media pundits and doomsayers, I for one am very bullish. Why?

1. I look at the growth of my own mortgage lead management company, primarily fueled by the mortgage industry’s sales force, which has surged at an unbelievable rate since October 2007
2. I am seeing very strong and motivated mortgage professionals that were displaced by large mortgage company implosions and down-sizing reforming into very capable small to mid-size regional and national lenders. Additional strengths in these shops include:
   • Solid foundations in knowledge, compliance, and technology
   • Focused on solution selling and client fulfillment
   • Marketing savvy and willing to do the hard work in sales
   • Most importantly–They are being built like businesses not fly-by night, beer money, checking accounts
3. They are building a client base and focusing on serving that base with education and consultation, not pounding through triggers with dialers and shaking down friends, neighbors, and professional connections for victims
4. All the strongest, most successful businesses rise from the ashes of crashes. Take a look at the start-up dates of companies like Dell, Amazon.com, Quicken Loans. Not the most prosperous times in there respective sectors
5. Everyone is here to help make you successful:
   • Internet mortgage leads are less competitive, cheaper, more transparent, and generated with more integrity than ever before,
   • The whole Federal government, from the White House to Congress is behind making it easier to qualify borrowers–HOPE, FHASecure, FED rate slashing
   • The media and the government is running one heck of a free marketing campaign

There are 5 reasons, of many, to be excited about growing your mortgage business, but I want to leave you with a bit more. Let’s think about action items. For that I am going to point to some required reading:

• Owen Raun’s, Mortgage Online Blog–A mortgage professional building a dynamite multi-state mortgage lending business
• Lead Critic–Everything you wanted to know about buying Internet leads
• Morgan Brown’s, Blown Mortgage–Demonstrating how educating mortgage consumers on avoiding a bad mortgage makes you money
• Dave Savage’s, Savage Insights–Illustrating successful loan officer strategies and real success stories

And a couple of my own if I may:

•  My Internet Mortgage Originations How-To Series on Lead Critic 
• Lead Marketwatch, An insider view into the mortgage lead market and the age-old question–who has the best leads?