Interthinx offers FHA allowable fees analysis

The hardcore loan officerEric Weinsteinloan officers, Carteret Mortgage, unemployed If you are reading this, you are one of the survivors. Looking back less than a year, loan officers on the streets had any level of experience from "just getting started" to more than 20 years. Now, chances are you have a minimum of 10 years in the business and were "just getting by" before the rates sank recently. If you are reading this, it means you are still in the mortgage business, while many others have switched jobs, remain unemployed or have opened up side businesses to stay afloat. You are the "hardcore" loan officer. This is your chosen profession. You are sticking with it, mainly because you really don't have any other job skills, or stubbornly refuse to take a job from your father-in-law! Well, speaking from the other side, let me tell you what it is like. I was the owner of one of the nation's largest mortgage brokers, Carteret Mortgage. You old timers will remember us. We had a good system, strong internal controls and a top esprit de corps. We were on top of the world. And then & we weren't. Since closing the company, which you can imagine is pretty devastating, I have toyed with many ideas, including selling stuff on eBay, starting an Internet retailer, becoming an online riverboat poker gambler (kidding) and eating a bullet (really kidding). You go in and out of manic euphoria (when you think you have the next great idea) to the "can't get out of your pajamas/sleeping all day" depression; then, you realize that you are just one of the countless million unemployed out there. The weird thing is that I have been unemployed before. I went through this same thing during the savings and loan crisis years ago. It seems it should have been worse back then, because that was when I was younger and I had nothing. Now, I have some fat still accumulated during the good times, but I know this is a level deeper of misery. I think it is because when times are good and then bad, you mourn for the good times back, rather than when you just didn't know better. I tell you this because I know many of you are going though this, too. Well, I am here to tell you the solution. Get back to work! If you are like me, mortgages are pretty much all you know. If you are, like me, 20-plus years into it, you might as well acknowledge you are a "hardcore" loan officer and know there is just nothing out there like it. No job pays as well, or gives you the independence or job satisfaction. All businesses and jobs have the same ups and downs, same frustrations and difficulties. You might as well "bloom where you are planted" and do what you know. As for me, I am getting out of my pajamas and getting a job as a loan officer. I might as well admit it to myself: I am a "hardcore" loan officer. I have been to the other side, and there is nothing there. Eric Weinstein may be reached at (703) 505-8692 or e-mail eweinstein@aol.com.