I believe strongly that we really need to embrace and support our lender partners. After all they are our suppliers and without our suppliers we do not have much of a business.
That said, I also strongly believe that any partnership is stronger when the partners are on an equal footing. As brokers we need to stand united in the service and value that we provide to our lender partners. The problem we have run into in the last number of years is that we, the broker community, have not done a great job of raising our game and providing a greater value to our suppliers. If we cannot become a more efficient distribution channel our suppliers will be forced to find another way.
Lenders are more and more designing programs in such a way that they continue to fragment us as individuals. Special deals from individual to individual. The problem with this from a brokers perspective is that if we are not unified to some extent we are in an extremely vulnerable position.
We need to stop beating each other up and start to work together to grow our market share as a community. If I were on the other side of the equation (ie the lenders seat) I would be pretty disappointed with the broker channel. If I were a lender looking to grow an efficient and manageable distribution channel I would certainly have to take a long hard look at my internal sales force to see if I could do things more effectively.
If we continue to knock each other over the head with rate buy-downs we leave the opportunity for the direct mortgage sales force to run right up the middle and further reduce our market share.
