As I’ve always said, there are good times and bad times in our industry. If you plan to stick around for the long-haul, you have to be prepared for both. Low sales volume, reduced home prices and falling interest rates can be great for borrowers looking for a good deal, but not so great for the mortgage industry.

Margins can be compressed further when you add in stricter regulatory compliance, increasing competition and rising origination costs. First, a little perspective. Every industry will experience times when their products and/or services are extremely valuable, and times where profits are being squeezed due to either a lack of demand or increasing costs.

Now, for the good news. There is always something you can do about it.

Optimize

Optimizing your office’s efficiency is the easiest way to stave off losses. Audit your expenses and where your time, money and energy is best spent. This can also help to streamline processes, define team members’ roles more clearly and lead to an office that runs much smoother than it did before.

Prepare

I’ve told the fable about the ants and the grasshopper before. Be like the ants! When times are good, assume they won’t always stay that way. When times are leaner, hope they won’t always stay that way…but prepare as if they will. This may mean more cold calling, more followups and more collaborative events for realtors. You know how to drum up business. You just have to get out there, hit the pavement and actually do it!

Progress

APM offers a variety of tools, resources and support to our loan officers. Are you using them? All of them? Implementing technology into your everyday practices can be some of the easiest ways to save yourself time and money. Request targeted drip email campaigns. Update your website. Become more active on social media. Create short videos that can be distributed via email, social media and text.

Failing to plan is planning to fail.  The key here is to have a plan and then execute it.