"You don't plan your budget off your best month, and you don’t plan your attitude off your worst month"
The US mortgage market is facing the fallout of a refinance boom. After the pandemic glory days, many lenders have gone bust, banks collapsed, and mortgage professionals have been threatened by current industry and economic turmoil.
There’s no denying that the mortgage world has hit a rough patch, according to Jason Smith, head of revenue at Cloudvirga. Smith joined the latest edition of MPA TV, where he gave an overview of the market and assessed the space during these tough times.
“I would be lying if I didn’t say anything other than it’s a tough time right now,” he said. “But I think that’s what a lot of people sort of overlook, is the fact that we had a really great year and a half. But the smart people in the industry knew that that couldn’t last forever.”
Smith, who started as an originator several years ago, observed that the practice of budgeting their plans around their best month has kept many in the industry stuck.
“You don’t plan your budget off your best month, and you don’t plan your attitude off your worst month,” Smith said. “It’s been tough, but we don’t want to get stuck in that pattern of ‘what are we waiting for?’ I think there’s a lot of opportunity out there, and the smart people and the smart companies that see that are the ones that are going to be moving forward. I think there’s a lot of great opportunity.”
One area of opportunity, Smith pointed out, is the purchase market.
“We’ve moved into much more of a purchase market. I think one of the things the last several years have shown too, is a resurgence in mortgage brokers. I think we’ve seen a resurgence in a, let’s call it, a respect for the industry that the industry lost after 2008-2009, which is really cool. It’s a really good opportunity for us as an industry to take advantage of some really good opportunities that are going to set us up not only as individual companies for the foreseeable future, but also as an industry.
“And it’s a really good time to get people excited about it and start getting a whole new wave, a whole new generation, if you will, of folks within our industry, from originators, to underwriters, to leadership. So, I’m excited about it.”
Smith talked more about the role of mortgage technology in helping the market recover in the latest MPA TV episode, which you can watch here for free.
