After a period of bloating the industry with loan officers and operations staff so that we could keep up with the refinance boom of all times during the pandemic, the industry has shrunk like an accordion in response to the “aftermath.” Interesting word “aftermath” used to describe what has happened in the past two years because of the root of the word — math.
After all, this is all about math. If you cut production by 65%, then you have no chance of making the math work with too many employees. Thus, the accordion analogy, only there was no music coming from shrinking production — only cries of pain.
Since I have been in the industry for over 40 years (yes, I started when I was seven years old) — I certainly have seen plenty of cycles. Following a refinance boom, we saw the bond market sell-off in 1987, as the 10-year Treasury rose to over 10.0% in short order. This led to Black Monday, a stock market crash in October. Plenty of ups and downs and euphoria and pain.