If you're like just about every other loan officer I've met, you believe you have unique qualities that would appeal to potential clients (or Realtors or other referral sources) – qualities these people could only discover by getting to know you. If that Realtor or that person shopping for a loan really got to know you, you're confident they would choose you to be their lender, right?

But if they haven't had the opportunity or taken the time to get to know you, there's no way they would know about these unique and attractive qualities of yours, and as a result, they are likely to see you as pretty much like any other loan officer. Which is why everybody is always asking you about your "rates".

This is a problem for you, because if you don't stand out in the crowd, you'll never get the chance to show them all the really important reasons why you would be the "right" loan officer for a potential client or Realtor partner.

Most loan originators try to solve this problem by using e-mail marketing, developing a website, and/or using social media or other types of marketing in order to build name recognition and a reputation in their local markets. The various technologies involved can seem somewhat daunting at first, but for most of us, the learning curve is not that difficult. So you can set up an e-mail marketing account, a website, Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter accounts, and so forth, with a little bit of time and not too much trouble.

The hard part is coming up with things to say that people would actually want to read, or listen to, or watch.

Many loan officers would rather spend the afternoon in a dentist's chair than sitting in front of their computer writing something for other people to read. Once you get something down on paper (or pixels), your Inner Critic takes one look at it and tells you it's complete rubbish.

Other loan officers don't even get that far – writing anything, let alone something that would be informative, useful, and interesting, just seems like way too much trouble.

Whichever group you happen to belong to, you might end up buying canned content from one of the many providers out there -- people who know that there are a lot of you will pay good money to get something – anything – that you can use to feed your e-mail campaigns, website pages and blogs, and so forth.

The only problem with this approach is that it brings you right back to the problem you started with: you started with a desire to show potential clients and referral sources that you have unique qualities that would make you a better choice than any of your competitors. But now, because you're using the same content everyone else is using, you still sound just like everyone else.

And you have blown your chance to distinguish yourself in your market as someone unique and worth getting to know.


How to Solve This Problem

As you know, I coach mortgage professionals exclusively. I also limit the number of people I work with to no more than 20 full-time clients at a time. Among other services, I help my loan originator clients create their own unique content that they can use in their local markets to reach out to consumer (home buyer) leads, existing clients, Realtors, and other referral sources. We start with material I have written for this purpose, and then we work to personalize it for you and your market. And because I never work with more than 20 clients at a time, you can be confident that the content we create together will not only be interesting to your readers, it will be new to them.

If you'd like to find out more about how I can help you build your reputation in your local market, and if you've never had a free coaching session with me, please go here and request a free, personal, one-hour coaching session at no obligation.

In future posts, I will be sharing some of the things I've learned about creating content that is interesting, useful, and builds your reputation as a trusted expert in your field. Stay tuned.

foreclose on the property – a process that both delays and raises the cost of obtaining a foreclosure). Because so much of this low-priced shadow inventory is now found in judicial states, fewer of these homes are coming to market.

Another constriction on inventory is being caused by what has been called the "interest rate lockout effect." Almost half of all homeowners with mortgages have loans with rates of 4.5% or lower. There is a well-founded and widespread belief that interest rates will be rising in the near future. As a result, these homeowners with low fixed rate mortgages have much less incentive to sell and buy another home if that would mean taking on a mortgage with a higher rate than the one they have now.

There is also a high percentage of mortgaged homes with an effective LTV of more than 80%. This doesn't prevent people from selling their home and buying another, but it would likely mean that they would be required to purchase mortgage insurance – thus making their payment higher and the mortgage more expensive.

These 3 factors have all contributed to the perceived lack of inventory.

There are also Constraints on the Demand Side
Historically, while first-time buyers represent a significant percentage of all buyers, the majority of homebuyers are also sellers of an existing home. But because of the supply-side constraints outlined above, we are not seeing as many "move-up buyers" in the mix. Many of the people who might otherwise be thinking of selling their home and buying another have decided to stay in their current homes and wait for conditions to get better. Until these people decide to sell, they won't be in the market to buy either, and that reduces demand.

Demand has also been reduced by the fact that institutional investors have lost much of their appetite for buying homes – largely because home prices have continued to rise (a 7.5% year over year increase in the Home Price Index just reported for June).

Furthermore, the significantly reduced number of loans being originated with credit scores below 640 today, compared to before the bubble burst, means that about 25% of the traditionally credit-eligible population is having a difficult time getting mortgage financing to purchase a home.

And finally, the decline in the national homeownership rate (currently at 64.8% -- its lowest point since 1995) shows a shift from owning to renting. This is particularly true of the Millennial generation. The home ownership rate for 25 to 34-year-old Baby Boomers was 51.6% in 1980. The homeownership rate for 25 to 34-year-old Millennials in 2012 was only 37.9%. (Millennials are also waiting longer to get married, which may be related, and many of them have much higher student loan debt than Baby Boomers did at the same age.)

How Loan Originators Can Proactively Respond to These Conditions 
On the supply (inventory) side of the equation, you can work with your Realtor partners to identify homeowners who might benefit from selling their current home.

Begin by identifying neighborhoods where prices are good (from a seller's perspective), and demand is good – as indicated by relatively short "days on market" before a sale, and by relatively high ratios (over 30%) of monthly sales numbers compared to the number of homes for sale.

We know that mortgage interest rates are still relatively low (about 4.25% as I write this for a 30 year fixed rate mortgage). If sellers can make a relatively quick sale of their current home, chances are good they will be able to purchase, and if necessary, finance their next home purchase fairly quickly, and before any significant increase in interest rates.

You also know that every situation is unique. The seller, for example, may have significant equity that can be applied toward the purchase of a next home. Even if the interest rate would be higher than their current rate, the larger down payment and the relatively small mortgage could make a higher interest rate a moot point for the client.

Your strategy would be to put together, with your Realtor Partner, a series of targeted, co-branded postcard mailings to the kinds of neighborhoods I have described. You and your Realtor Partner would be offering a free Market Analysis of the prospect's home (done by the Realtor), combined with a free Financial Analysis (conducted by you). The Realtor helps the potential Seller get a sense of what their house would sell for. Your job would be to interview the potential Sellers to understand what their goals would be, and what they would be looking to accomplish if they were to sell their home and buy another (or simply sell their home). With that information, you could put together a financial analysis that shows the prospective Sellers how likely it would be that they could accomplish their financial and personal objectives by putting your home on the market.

On the demand side, you would also want to work with your Realtor partners. They get leads every day from people who are basically dipping their toes in the water to see what's out there. These people are legitimate buyer prospects. They would not put themselves in the position of having to talk to a salesperson (the Realtor) unless they had a genuine desire to buy a home. But their skepticism and sales resistance is high – as evidenced by the typically very low rates of conversion that Realtors experience.

You (and not the Realtor) are in the best position to speak to these buyer prospects so that you can interview them and discover their reasons for wanting to buy a home – and just as importantly, their fears, obstacles, and concerns about whether this is the right time for them to do so. You can position yourself and act as a home buying coach. You place yourself on their side, and you help them understand and sort through all of the pros and cons of buying a home in today's market. Every situation is different. Whether you're talking to Baby Boomers, Generation Xers, or Millennials, you will find people who have been hesitant to move forward with the homebuying process because they have been misinformed or have been made fearful because of something they've heard from a friend or in the media that in their case, at least, does not apply.

In this way, you are able to help people who really would benefit from buying a home, and at the same time, you will be providing your Realtor partners with transactions they would never have gotten otherwise.

A New Seminar That Addresses This Solution
On Wednesday, August 13th, I will be presenting a new, free online seminar: The Home Buyer Strategy Session -- Your Key to More Originations. You may already be registered for this seminar. If you are, you received an e-mail yesterday with full instructions for joining the seminar. If you're not registered and would like to attend, go here.

You can also watch the latest seminar in the series, "How to Do an Effective Home Buyer Interview" by clicking here. You can access all of the previous seminars in this series by clicking here.

Almost any loan officer can get a Realtor to give them a buyer lead as a way of seeing what the LO can do with it, expanding the Realtor's financing options, or maybe because the Realtor's current lender just blew a deal.

Of course, it's not my approach to suggest you go around to Realtors asking for charity, or even "a chance" -- my approach is to come to Relators with a very solid value proposition that offers them significant benefits they're probably not getting from their current lenders.

In previous seminars, I showed you how to raise your visibility with the Realtors in your market through the use of content marketing that is both relevant and useful to agents. I showed you how, with patience, good content, and appropriate calls to action, you can get Realtors to reach out to you (rather than you being one of many loan officers chasing after them). I showed you how to do an interview in which Realtors come face to face with the statistical evidence in their business that shows them the true cost of the opportunities they are missing every day.

In September's seminar, I showed you how to follow that interview with a presentation that shows them exactly why they're experiencing the problems they are, and shows them how you can make an enormous difference for them by making a couple of simple changes in the way they handle the leads they are already generating.

When loan officers follow the process  I laid out in these 4 previous seminars, they are able to break through the barriers Realtors have erected (especially since refis went away and every Realtor is now getting bombarded by LOs who didn't pay much attention to the purchase market until there were no more refis to do). When you give the presentation I shared with you in the September seminar, you will make a very strong impression, and Realtors will be enthusiastic about working with you.

But how do you follow through, and how do you get the Realtor to follow through? Because Realtors will begin to forget how excited they were as soon as you leave. Unless you keep the momentum going, they will forget most of what you told them within a week.

In the most recent seminar (held on November 14th), I show you how to systematically build your Realtor relationships, and solidify your gains.

The video of that seminar is now posted on the site, and you can view it here.