You mentioned treating borrowers only as a tool to maximize profits. Granted, those of us in the mortgage industry WANT to make a profit. But at what expense? Our reputation? The pocketbook of our clients? The potential future foreclosure of our clients? If we don’t have our CLIENTS’ best interests at heart, we have no business being in this line of work. We provide a service to our clients and those in any type of service industry are supposed to be focused on the needs, desires, and best interests of the client. Of course, the bottom line here is BEST INTERESTS. Taking advantage of a client’s desires (often due to a lack of education) over their best interests so that we can make a buck really provides no SERVICE at all and is predatory.

I agree with previous comments. Our job is to educate our clients in a way that provides for their best interests…not just ours!

In this blog post, I am actually taking issue with a business model where LOs no matter how they’re paid, W-2 or 1099, are taught to treat consumers only as an object to maximize profit.

It sounds like you have found a good company to work for, that matches your value system.

As with anything, it seems to me that the problems lie in human weaknesses, not in the need for more regulation–although sometimes regulation is necessary to curb the consequences of human weakness. If everybody thought of clients as people like themselves, they’d treat them more honestly. It can even be a kind of selfish thing on the part of loan originators, but good-selfish: nothing makes me a loyal customer more than a business that says, “Well, yes, you could pay us that much, but this lesser-cost thing would probably be better for your situation.” They give up money from me in the short term but secure my long-term business.

That’s why I’m working for a mortgage broker now. I wasn’t that interested in the field, but I was blown away by how well this particular office treated me when I bought my home. Their philosophy is to find out clients’ reasons for getting a loan: is the client investing, saving up for retirement, or settling long term into a dream home? In my case, all I cared about was my monthly payments, as my home is an investment, I don’t have much income, and I have an extremely high tolerance for risk. Even so, there are certain risky products that my loan originator wouldn’t even consider (such as anything that included a prepayent penalty).

I take some issue with your assessment of contract loan originators. All of the loan originators at my office except the branch manager are contract workers, and they have not been trained in “hard-core, script-memorizing, pressure-laden sales tactics.” They have no scripts, and they consider themselves advisors more than salespeople. I think it’s too much of a blanket statement to label contract loan originators as risky. I imagine that W-2 employees could have systems that use the pressure-laden sales tactics that you imagine most contract loan originators to use. Rather, I think that prospective borrowers should go by word of mouth and recommendations from those they trust–or, barring that, use their own intuition in working with loan originators. If there’s a sense of pressure, they should try somewhere else. That’s capitalism at its best.

In fact, your responsiveness and honesty, as well as a friend’s recommendation, are what caused me to choose your classes over all of the other choices listed on the DFI website. Should I have considered whether you were commission-based or payroll in making my decision?