Monday, November 26, 2007

Are We Done With The Blame Game Yet?

I continue to read stories in newspapers and on line about who is to blame for the mortgage mess. The latest is posted here; http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/CompanyFocus/WhosToBlameForTheMortgageMess.aspx.

At this point does it really matter who is to blame. As with the past financial challenges that this country has had to deal with, we have another caused by greed and lack of oversight. http://www.dailyreckoning.com/rpt/FinancialDisasters.html. Now is the time to move on. How do we do that? I am glad you asked!

As much as it pains me, I do believe that we need more regulation and licensing of mortgage originators; especially those that choose to be mortgage brokers. The challenge with a broker is that they are in theory there to help their client get the best by being able to offer products from a variety of companies. What has happened instead is the majority of brokers are there to only make as much money as they can and then move on to the next victim. Now I realize that victim is a harsh term, but the way the majority of the “dark side” behaved was to make as much as they could from as many as possible. As I sat in my office today helping one of my new loan officers understand some terminology on some different loan programs, he mentioned that there should be a school for loan officers so that they could go somewhere and get the education to understand what it was that they were selling. For far too long this has been an industry of graduates of the School of Hard Knocks and the School of the Easy Path to Fast Money. Those of us that have chosen this career path to help people achieve their financial dreams need to push for licensing and education requirements so that we can keep the people who only want to make as much money as possible with the greatest of ease out of the business.

For you comments or questions, please contact Chris Scheer at 314.223.9824 or cscheer@cornerstonestl.com

No comments: